Malleus Malificarum
by Kermitfries
Summary: Conscience still exists but it applies only to my countrymen, my friends, and my children, not yours. You are excluded from my moral universe, and with impunity - I can now drive you from your home, or shoot your family, or burn you alive.
1. He's not human He's an it

**Summary: To escape persecution in Salem, a covenant of five blood lines was created. When one greedily seeked power, he was banished, and his blood line disappeared from history. The witch hunts evaporated, but the covenant remains to this day. And little do they know, so does the witch hunters.**

A/N: I didn't get too many reviews, but I read a story. It was called Fractures, by SlytherinSecret418. And it was absolutely marvelous, and I recommend it to anyone who stumbles across Covenant fanfics. It has inspired me to elaborate on this chapter and that is why I have curbed it and made turned it into something real, and not just a teaser. So, I hope this chapter is satisfactory to those that read it. I changed quite a bit, so I figure if you want -- go ahead and read it, even if you read the teaser. Review it, because you know you love me. I was gonna incorprate the previous teaser chapter into this, but this chapter is like six pages long, so I had to cut the teaser in half -- so some of it's from the teaser, but not all. But this is the first chapter of my story, so enjoy it.

_He is not human. He is an it. And unfortuantely, this transformation of a man into an it makes him scarier as well. And once the other group has become populated by its, anything goes, especially if someone in authority gives the order. Conscience still exists, may even be very exacting, but it applies only to my countrymen, my friends, and my children, not yours. You are excluded from my moral universe, and with impunity -- and maybe even praise from the others in my group - I can now drive you from your home, or shoot your family, or burn you alive._

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The air was cold, the sort that gnawed at your skin even without wind, forcing you to huddle in on yourself and cling tighter to your coat, wishing you had a thicker one. Reid took a long drag at his cigarette and held the smoke in like he had taken a drag from a blunt. He waited until his lungs burnt before slowly letting the smoke leak from his nose. There was something going on over at Nicky's with Aaron and Reid didn't feel much like being ambushed. Not while he was still sober, at least. He tossed his cigarette to the side and slowly made his way toward a bar not too far from Nicky's. It would be a fine substitute. And who knew? Maybe it had a core population that was different yet just as sufficient as Nicky's.

Reid pushed open the stiff doors without breaking his stride and pulled to a stop inside of the bar. He was almost ashamed that he hadn't ever branched out before. It had always just been Nicky's..and then his dorm room. A routine that hadn't, but possibly could one day, gotten boring. The bar wasn't as big as Nicky's because it didn't provide an expansive floor that allowed dancing. It was cluttered with small tables, and stools that looked a couple of decades old. The bar counter was littered with empty beer bottles and half full classes of liquor. The bar was semi empty and Reid crossed it in a few slow strides. He tried to sum up the bartender before coming face to face with the man, trying to predict whether or not this man would card him.

Reid had known Nicky since he was ten; Nicky had been a close friend of his father's. And ever since the age of sixteen Nicky had looked the other way as he slipped Reid alcohol, sometimes free. He and Reid had a silent agreement that neither of them had ever verbally agreed on. Nicky trusted this impulsive idiot to merely not drink and drive, and Reid had barely kept up his end of the deal...but he had kept it up. His father was dead, and it was too disrespectful for Reid to damage his relationship with his father's bestfriend, a man who had been as close to his father as Tyler currently was to him.

"Can I get a beer?" Reid asked, leaning against the counter, staring straight into the bartender's dark eyes. The dark eyes bore into his icy eyes, seemingly studying him for a moment. And then the man grunted and turned away. Reid watched him pull a beer bottle out of a refridgerator beneath the bar before setting it down on the counter. Reid pulled out a ten dollar bill and dropped into on the counter. "Thanks," he murmured coolly. "Keep the change." The man grunted again, a thick hand reaching down to swipe up the money. His hooded eyes watched Reid cross the bar, eyeing the pool tables, but Reid was suddenly oblivious of the man.

"You in?" A bigger man asked the approaching blonde. The man was eye level to Reid, but he had a broad chest and thick shoulders in a way that made it obvious the man was big because of muscle and not fat. He was leaning back against the only pool table in Reid's line of vision.

"For money?" Reid asked. He had stopped, a few feet separating the two of them. Reid couldn't help being a little cautious. He had trusted people before, always trying to ignore Tyler's nagging voice in his head, and they proved to be a bit less harmless than he first had figured. Tyler, on the other hand, trusted nobody. Except Reid. he could prove to be reserved around Pogue and Caleb, but only Reid knew how he could open up. Only Reid knew how his mind worked, and his insecurities.

The man gave a short nod of his head. "Name your price." His voice was deep, thick. Manly, Reid supposed. He hoped his voice wouldn't change like that when he got older. The guy's voice got annoying, real fast; and with an annoying voice like that, it must be real hard to get laid. Reid shivered at the thought.

But Reid forced himself to ignore his problems for the time being. This guy can't know how to play pool, Reid decided. He was older than the usual population, so he couldn't have known Reid Garwin either. His problem, Reid proposed. "Fifty," Reid said immediately. With Aaron, they usually started at twenty, but steadily moved up, until Reid had won too many times and Aaron got too pissed to pay. It usually ended up in a fight, but sometimes Reid got his money -- and that's why he kept coming back.

The man gave a stiff nod and began racking up the balls of a previous game he hadn't participated in. He had been waiting for someone. Reid dropped a fifty onto the table and strode past the bigger man and observed the rack of pool sticks in great detail. He was already beginning to feel uncomfortable, like something wasn't right. Reid wasn't accustomed to the feeling and promptly ignored it while plucking a stick that mirrored all the sticks beside it. He picked up the blue chalk and twisted it bitterly on the top of the stick before dropping it back down onto the top of the rack.

When Reid turned back around to face the table he realized, with a sickening feeling, that this random nobody had been staring at him. The man's eyes immediately lightened up, but not quick enough for the shift to go unnoticed by the blonde. He had been watching him with an intense gaze that unnerved the blonde. Reid's gaze flickered across the room to the bartender who was also staring intently at him, and then it flickered back to the man standing beside the pool table. "You know what?" Reid said suddenly, placing the pool stick carefully onto the table that separated him from the bigger man. "I think I'm gonna skip out on this game," he added nonchalantly, reaching a hand forward to pluck the fifty from the middle of the table.

The bigger man's fist closed tightly around his outstretched wrist, and held it away from the money. "The stake's already on the table," the man grumbled, a raspy voice seeping through his deeper voice. Reid knew the rules. Once the money was on the table there was no backing out, but he couldn't go through with this game. Not this time, even if it made him feel like a coward. The sons of Ipswich were taught to acknowledge their gut instinct before all else, and he had been ignoring his a lot lately. He wasn't going to make that mistake again.

"I've got places to be," he tried again, hiding his concern with expert like skill. He skinny wrist was still enclosed in a meaty fist. "Dude --" Reid gave a jerk of his wrist, but the bigger man jerked him forward and the blonde stumbled closer a few steps. "Get off," the blonde tried again, jerking his arm back. The man didn't let go and another meaty fist enclosed the upper arm of his other arm, pulling Reid close enough that his breath danced across the blonde's cheek, burying itself somewhere in his soft hair. For the first time in his life, Reid felt dirty. He could faintly smell whiskey. "What are you --"

"Shh," the man hushed and Reid felt sickened as his voice died immediately on command. The man's fists were tightening, and Reid inwardly winced as he was pressed against the man's broad chest. The brief flickering of an idea crossed his mind. He wanted to Use. So badly, but then he saw Tyler, quietly scolding him inside his head. That was the worst part about Using, the way Tyler would look at him and shake his head, telling him how stupid he's been -- Using for stupid stuff like hustling. He hated it when Tyler was disappointed in him, and he hated that fact deeply. Reid let the idea slip away.

A fist had slipped free from Reid's arm, but Reid didn't notice it until he felt something poke into his stomach. Reid's shifty gaze dropped down, peering into the space between the two of them. There was a flash of light and Reid tried to jump back as the taser stabbed painfully into his stomach. His body shook involuntarily and he tried to recoil. The man had immediately released Reid and he fell back with a shout, landing hard on the dirty floor, the fifty dollar bill futtered to the ground, forgotten.

Reid was on his feet almost immediately, clutching his stomach tightly. He hadn't ever been electrocuted before. Reid backtracked, glancing to the left in search of an easy escape route. The bartender filled in the formerly promising gap. Reid's eyes dropped apprehensively to the object in his hands. It didn't look exactly friendly. "What are you doing?" He asked, displeased with the tremor he heard in his own voice.

"Something your ancestors taught us," the man sneered, his previously emotionaless face screwed up into a face of pure hatred. He jerked his arm forward swiftly, and a whip-like rope leapt to attention. The man struck Reid expertly, his whip wrapping easily around the struggling blonde's neck. But it wasn't just a whip, Reid soon found out, as several hundred volts of electricity was pumped into his body. Reid's body jerked spasmedically, and he stumbled closer when the particularly brutal bartender jerked hard on the whip, shaking fingers gipping the rope painfully, trying to somehow escape it's painful grasp. "You see, Mr. Garwin, we find that particular power of yours rather tiresome. But we've learned that it takes considerable concentration for it to work. With three hundred volts of electricity running through your system, your power is nonexistent." The bartender took a deep breath and sighed serenly. "Get used to this feeling, witch."

"Fuck you," Reid choked out as his struggling intensified, realization dawning. They were witch hunters. How had he missed that before? He tried to muffle his soft yelps of pain and tried to still the spasmedic jerks of his body and ignore the burning pain that radiated through the length of his form. Reid threw his body hard against the bartender and they both fell together. Reid quickly pulled back sharply, dismayed with the bartender latched onto his shirt and pulled him closer. He let the bartender catch him as is hands fumbled desperately at the whip around his neck. He managed to get it free, his eyes bleeding black immediately. But his power had been sapped and concentration was impossible. The whip crumbled in his fist, partially decomposed.

The bigger man that had suddenly disappeared before appeared behind him and snaked an arm around his waist, roughly jerking the young boy off of the bartender. Reid was thrown against the pool table, the edge cutting roughly into his back. The man paused briefly, as the bartender climbed slowly to his feet. They knew they had him cornered, and he frowned at the glee he found in their eyes. They stared calmly into his black orbs. "Well fuck me gently with a chainsaw," Reid muttered under his breath as he eyed the two witch hunters apprehensively. "Why are --" Reid began, his voice louder this time.

"You know why," the bartender interrupted. He didn't continue and Reid knew he assumed that was a good enough answer.

"I haven't broken any laws," Reid tried again. His throat vibrating uncomfortably as he spoke, the soundwaves hot in his throat and his voice come out as a hard rasp.

"Underage drinking is prohibited in this region," the bartender disagreed. "And you're a witch." He spat that last word out as if it tasted horrid.

Reid's eyes flickered across the suddenly empty bar. Where had everyone gone? "Being a witch isn't illegal," Reid snapped.

The bigger man shrugged. "Doesn't much matter, does it?"

"Well. Yeah. Kinda," Reid mumbled, standing straight, apprehensively preparing for another fight. "This is just kinda my life we're discussing here. It tends be a little important to me...I'm funny like that, I suppose."

The bartender whistled, a sadistic grin cutting his face in half. "This one's got a mouth on him."

"Sure would be fun to break," the bigger man agreed.

Reid snorted. "Good luck at that," he added, flashing them a cocky grin. Reid didn't see the movement until the whip had wrapped once more around his neck. Another whip leapt forward and enclosed Reid's ankle. With a quick tug Reid's leg was pulled ruthlessly from beneath him and he landed on his back hard. His head bounced off the ground and he laid still, blinking away black dots. He felt the power slip away as he fumbled for it and knew that his eyes had returned to icy blue. The bigger of the two men was on top of Reid before he could recover, a fist entangled in Reid's shirt front, his legs entrapping Reid's hips. If the situation hadn't been so critical, Reid would have made a sex joke. The man felt like dead weight, pinning Reid painfully to the greasy floor beneath him. He swiftly raised a fist. The punch was hard, harder than Aaron or Caleb had ever hit him, and black dots returned to dance temptatiously before his eyes. His hands weakly fumbled for the fist that was pinning him to the floor in an attempt to dislodge the hunter.

He was squirming beneath this stranger in a bar that hadn't been deserted until ten minutes ago. He was completely alone; his power had deserted him and he suddenly felt lost without it. "Get off," Reid shouted angrily, feeling the man squeeze his knees again, burying each into Reid's sides with bruising force. The man had swung back again. The hit, although Reid saw it coming, caught him off guard, and he actually let a yelp slip. "Crazy bitch," he swore. Blood was filling his mouth, making him cough. He lifted his head and spat the blood out in the man's general direction. The man pulled back and punched him again. Reid's head snapped back, connected with the ground again; a sickening thud suddenly loud. Reid's vision began to fade and black dots returned for a third time, threatening to finally expand and elimate his eyesight.

A third party that Reid hadn't noticed before appeared over the bigger man's shoulder. Reid couldn't see where the bartender had gone; maybe he had taken a seat and was currently thoroughly enjoying the show. The third party shifted uncomfortably, looking like he was about to throw up or something. "Okay, Bob. I think that's enough," he said awkwardly, inching closer to the abrasive hunter and the dazed boy. But even Reid could hear the slight tremor in his voice. Reid vaguely wondered if this was how Tyler would respond, should Reid actually attempt to beat Aaron to death. He suddenly hoped not. He didn't want a walking, talking shadow of himself anymore. "Marvin wants these kids alive -- and that one won't last much longer if you keep --"

"Shut up, Charlie," the hunter identified as Bob snapped, throwing a disgusted look over his shoulder. Reid saw Charlie visibly flinch back, their eyes momentarily locking before Reid's vision turned red as blood obscurred his sight. "We know what these _things _can do," Bob went on. "I'm just making sure this one here doesn't try anything on me," he sneered, returning his gaze back to Reid, who had lifted a heavy hand and poked himself in the eye as he tried desperately to claw away the blood. He swore under his breath and he rubbed his eye gingerly.

"Le' me up," Reid slurred, his voice disgruntled and weaker than he could ever remember hearing it before. "Crushing," he gasped out, trying to squirm for emphasis. He knew his face was a colorful mixture of blood and forming bruises. He didn't want to have to see himself like that, but even so, the heavy hand that was oddly gaining weight clumsily slid across his face, moving from his still stinging eye to fumble over a particularly throbbing cut on his head that Bob's ring had dealt him. His hand came away bloody and he grimaced. "Can't breath," he said quietly, feeling his eyes close ever so slightly.

"Jeez," Charlie grimaced. "You're killing the boy, Bob." His eyes uncomfortably roamed over Reid's bloodied face. "Just...just c'mon, let him up. There ain't no way that boy is escaping, Bob. Don't be so cruel."

Bob shook his head, disgusted at his companion and the Bartender snickered in the background. Bob was always an adament hunter, and all three parties knew Bob was close to make a speech. "This _thing _goes around threatening the lives of all others. How can you treat him like he has a right to be treated fair. This _thing _doesn't have any rights. He's worst than a rabied animal."

Reid wanted to argue. To say 'No, I'm really not. I'm bodily aware of my actions. I'm not all that bad, really.' But the words failed him and floated away before he could force them into a sentence structure. Reid's eyes fluttered open and he shook his head, stopping abruptly as a wave of nausea threatened him with bodily harm and extreme discomfort. "I don' hur' shi'," he mumbled, his voice pleasantly holding a sharp edge.

"I saw you torturing that student last week," Bob argued. "I saw the glee in your eyes, as you engaged in an unfair fight."

"You see my eyes?" Reid asked slowly, trying to pronounce the words correctly. "I didn't rig the fight. I didn't even start it. I'm a fucking teenager, for fuck's sake."

"You may look like one," the bartender agreed, sauntering closer to the group. "But that don't mean you still ain't a slave of Satan's.

"Christ," Reid swore, squirming indignantly beneath Bob. Bob wouldn't admit this to a living soul, but he liked the frustrated noises Reid was making as he tried to heave the heavier man off of him. It was the sound of lost. This boy was losing; that very thought brought a smile to Bob's face.

"My family ain't even fucking Christian. The devil isn't kind've nonexistent to us. Assholes." Bob's smile grew wider, darker and he felt the boy shiver beneath him. "Don't fucking smile at me like that, you fucking creeper," Reid snapped, suddenly very conscious, the pain ebbing away his mentality.

"I predict I'm gonna have fun with this one," Bob said suddenly, his eyes burning into Reid's. He leant forward, his weight shifting uncomfortably on Reid's chest. He leant forward until Reid could feel the man's breath against his ear. "I'm gonna see you burn," he hissed. "But you're gonna beg for the stake before I'm done with you," he promised.

Reid's struggles redoubled. He punched out, knowing that his strength was deflated. His fist found a soft spot along Bob's ribs and the hunter doubled over as the breath was forced from him. Reid violently twisted to his side, bucking the man off of him. He then proceeded to bound his feet quickly and stumble away. The bartender was moving before Reid could duck below a table. A whip shot out and latched onto his ankle again, tripping him up in midstride, and sending him crashing to the floor. Even with electricity coursing through his body he tried to drag himself away. The bartender was relentless and jerk hard on the whip, dragging him painfully across the floor. Bob was on his feet once more and kicked out a foot, catching Reid in the chest. Reid bit back a yelp and caught Bob's foot the next time he tried to kick out. Reid ruthlessly twisted the outstretched foot and shoved Bob away when he heard a sickening crack and the shout of a sadisitc hunter.

The bartender had bent down, meaty fingers grabbing Reid's leg tightly, violently twisting the leg, spinning Reid onto his back and pulling him closer than the whip could. Reid lifted his free leg and kick out hard, catching the bartender in the face. He stumbled back, clutching his nose but Reid could see the crimson seeping through fat fingers. Reid sat up quickly, bloody hands fumbled to unravel the whip, jerking as his hands were shocked in the process. He gripped the whip handle in his hand so hard that it started to hard and then he stumbled to his feet. He threw a quick glance toward Charles, who had merely backed away from the preceedings. But Reid wasn't cruel and quickly turned his back to the harmless third party before limping quickly to the door. He knew the bartender was following him and he waited until the bartender had left the bar before glancing over his shoulder and sending the bartender back through the glass door.

Reid didn't have a car because his mother refused to buy him another car after he'd crashed his previous two; and Tyler had left town two days ago to visit some dying aunt...somewhere. Reid was suddenly glad that Tyler would be far removed from the sudden but seemingly inevitable violence. Nicky's was just a few hundred yards away, and Reid tried to jog for it, stumbling and falling several times before crashing through Nicky's doors. It was nearing five am and the crowd inside of Nicky's was nearly nonexistent, but those that were there glanced at Reid. He could vaguely recognize several students from school, and then he saw Aaron. Even Aaron looked slightly alarmed, until his shiteater grin slid into place. Reid ignored him and stumbled up to the bar. He had patted down his pockets as he was crossing the space between the two bars, swearing loudly when he found no phone. He couldn't even remember if he had brought his phone -- but if he had, he knew it was suicide to go back for it now. "I need to use the phone," he said, his voice low and raspy, feeling Aaron Abbott's eyes on his back, and distantly hearing his name murmured in Kira's voice. He leant heavily against the bar, pressing trembling hands hard against the counter.

"What the hell happened to you, Garwin?" Nicky asked, eyeing Reid suspiciously. Reid could remember when Nicky had referried to his father as Garwin; when Nicky used to call him Reid. He couldn't remember when he'd suddenly became a Garwin, but he knew it was after his father's death.

"None of your business," Reid answered, vaguely aware of the seemingly rude edge to his voice. "I need to use your phone," he repeated, trying to soften his voice.

Nicky shrugged off Reid's bloodied appearance and his slightly rude attitude. He jerked his head to the back and lifted the bar door so Reid could pass. Reid knew his way around well enough to not need an escort; how often had Nicky let his dad ditch him here while his dad had to go to work? He found the phone in Nicky's office, where it had always been and quickly dialed Caleb's number. Caleb answered on the first ring.

"Lost your phone again?" His voice held an edge that Reid was all too use to. Caleb knew that Reid wouldn't have gone through the trouble of finding another phone unless it was something important. Or something _Reid _thought was important.

"I need a ride," Reid said into the phone, biting back a groan as he sat gingerly down in Nicky's chair. Nicky had had this chair forever but Reid hadn't ever seen him sit in it. Not once.

"I'm busy, Reid," Caleb's voice sounded tired and Reid could easily pick out the annoyance immediately. "Why isn't Tyler with you?"

"He's still out of town," Reid answered immediately. "Just give me a ride, Caleb," he said firmly into the phone. "And I can explain everything --"

"What's wrong with you?"

Reid was slightly taken off guard by Caleb's sudden prying question. It wasn't like Caleb to sift through everybody's business...quite so personally. "What?" He asked distantly. "Nothing." His voice almost sounded casual, but Reid could hear his own tremor racking across his voice.

"Your voice sounds weird," Caleb went on. "Like you have a cold or something."

Reid cleared his throat, grimacing as pain flared up. "Thanks for the confident booster," he muttered into the phone. "Just give me a fucking ride," he added before hanging up. Reid found his way to the employee bathroom that was in the back of the bar and switched on the light. He wet a piece of toliet paper and dabbed gently at his face, trying to wash away the accumulated blood. But even without the blood, he looked terrible. There was a cut on his temple that looked like it needed stitches and wouldn't stop blood. The hair above the cut was tinged red, a thick streak of crimson make it's way down the side of his face. His cheek was deep pink, a deep cut in the middle of the shiner. His lip was bleeding, a deep cut reminding him that he had accidently bit through it. He knew his head was bleeding from where he had hit it on the ground. His neck was red and had definite lines where the whip had cut into him, and he didn't need to look to know that even though he had been wearing jeans, his leg was red too. He couldn't help himself anymore than he already had and he couldn't busy himself anymore than he already did, and he couldn't ignore the foreign feeling rising in the pit of his stomach; a feeling that was threatening to suffocate him. Fear.


	2. You seek escape from pain

A/N: Each covenant member will be in this story. You tell me what you wanna see -- should they each get caught and then have to escape the tortures that is persecution? Or should Pogue and/or Tyler be a suprising savior? Do you want a death? Also -- I have noticed that the first chapter was longish. And so is this one. But don't expect it everytime...the first two chapters are just me changing the teaser chapter into a real story. After this chapter -- you'll get the progression that has yet to be seen.

Side note -- So last night I watched supernatural -- and I actually just noticed that they have an episode called Malleus Malificarum. This is the book that was officially used to hunt and destroy witches hundreds of years ago.

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_You seek escape from pain. We seek the achievement of happiness. You exist for the sake of avoiding punishment. We exist for the sake of earning rewards. Threats will not make us function; fear is not our incentive. It is not death that we wish to avoid, but life that we wish to live. _

- Ayn Rand

"Ride's here." The deep grunt managed to not just cover the span of space but also break through Reid's worrysome thoughts. Reid's head jerked up but he knew that Nicky wouldn't come looking for him. Often times he wondered why Nicky forbade everyone else to cross over the bar, but he let Reid go without a second thought. Aaron had once made a scene about it. He hated it when Reid was allowed something that he was so blatantly denied, even if he didn't care for the object of desire. Reid shrugged, burying his gloved hands in his pockets, slowly exiting the office. He gave a curt nod in Nicky's general direction as he lifted the bar door and strode forward. Caleb was watching him closely, leaning against the counter casually, but Reid passed him without so much as casting the older boy a glance. Reid did catch Aaron's eye as the taller boy approached them. "What the hell happened to you?" Aaron bit out, stepping in front of Reid and forcing him to stop.

"Move." Reid voice sounded distorted and Caleb cocked his head to the side, eyeing the back of Reid's head. The hair there was caked with half dried blood. Reid's voice came out in a firm rasp. But the mockery and the taunting that Reid general held whenever he talked to anybody but Tyler had vanished. He souded dead serious.

"Like you can make me," Aaron scoffed. It was a challenge, and Reid finally lifted his icy gaze to Aaron's hooded eyes. He looked damn right smug and Reid wanted to rip that smug smile off his face. But he didn't have time for this shit.

"I don't have time for this shit," Reid sighed. What'd I tell you? Caleb's gaze flickered from Reid to Aaron's determined face. Reid was usually itching for a fight and would start one over anything the boy said, offensive or not. Caleb hadn't ever seen him try to get out of a fight, especially one with Aaron.

"Just leave it," Caleb ordered, brushing past Aaron with more force than necessary. Reid made to pass Aaron too and follow Caleb, surprisingly stepping to the side as to not touch Aaron at all, but Aaron's fist closed around his upper arm. Reid visibly flinched, realizing that Bob must have left a bruise when he'd grabbed in him in the exact same spot earlier.

Aaron's laughter reached Reid's ears and Reid jerked his arm back but Aaron held fast. "Aaron." Caleb's voice was firm, warning, but Aaron ignored him completely.

"Get lost, Abbott," Reid ordered, fingers working furiously to pry Aaron's hand away. Aaron's eyes were drawn to Reid's fingers as the boy worked. Reid's hand was still red, but he had washed away the blood, leaving tiny spots and red skin. When had Aaron gotten so much stronger?

Caleb appeared beside Reid and shoved Aaron back, hard. Aaron's hand slipped from Reid's arm and stumbled back, glaring at Caleb. "Need your boyfriend to fight your battles, Garwin?" Aaron spat angrily.

Reid shrugged tiredly and shoved past Caleb on his way to the door. He seemed oddly rushed as he quickly entered Caleb's car. He fastened his seatbelt and impatiently waited for Caleb to take a seat beside him. Reid felt Caleb eyeing him but he turned his icy gaze out the window. Caleb started the car and pulled out of Nicky's parking lot, glancing over at Reid every few minutes. "What the hell happened to you?" He asked, his voice harsh. Reid shrugged and stared hard at the window. "Answer me," Caleb commanded quietly.

"You know those witch hunts that happened in the sixteen hundreds?" Reid asked him, his eyes fixed on the blurred scenery outside the window. Caleb didn't respond but Reid didn't need him to. Caleb did acknowledge that Reid's voice sounded rawer in person; he noticed that Reid grimaced everytime he spoke. "Well I think they've learned some new tricks," he added quietly.

It took Caleb a moment to realize exactly what Reid was saying. "What?" he asked after a moment of silence. "What the hell --"

"Witch hunters," Reid told him calmly. "Three," he corrected himself. "They've learned how to overpower us, Caleb."

Caleb couldn't see the fear that was hiding in Reid's heavy gaze. He couldn't identify the slight tremor in Reid's voice. And he didn't see the red marks on Reid's neck until the blond turned his cold gaze toward the older boy. "Reid, what the hell happened?" Caleb asked, reaching out a hand to touch Reid's neck. The blonde flinched back, grimacing ever so slightly.

"They ambushed me in the bar next to Nicky's," Reid admitted. Caleb's eyes tore from his to glance back at the road, but Reid kept staring at Caleb. He didn't sound ashamed. Yet. "But they're powerful, Caleb," he added quickly. "They're just fucking humans..."

"Witch hunters?" Caleb repeated. "That's impossible. How did they know you were covenant unless you U--"

"I didn't Use," Reid snapped angrily. "I didn't do shit. They had their eye on me as soon as they saw me. I just figured they'd be interested in getting hustled but --"

"You hustled them, Reid," Caleb repeated, disdainfully. "Why can't you ever let well enough alone?"

Reid glanced sideways at Caleb who eyed him hard, but Reid returned his heated gaze evenly. "They took your phone?" Caleb asked, sudden realization dawning. Reid nodded uncomfortably. "Reid," Caleb spat. His name almost sounded like a cuss word. "They've got all of us now. Our names, addresses, phone numbers."

Reid shook his head quickly, the ghost of his familiar smirk forming. "No. They don't," he clarified. "It's all in code. I got bored in history a few weeks ago, and thought it'd be fun to fuck up my phone. So I translated everything into a code that I don't even know, just to see how'd that play out. They won't know shit, no matter how long they study that phone because there is no code."

Caleb glanced at Reid again, slightly baffled. Reid had seen Caleb surprised before; he hadn't ever seen him pleasantly surprised. "This is the only time your ADD will ever pay off." He almost sounded angry.

Reid nodded solemnly, his gaze returned to his window. "We're in trouble," he sighed darkly.

Caleb wiggled in the seat, fishing through his pocket and drew out his cell phone. He tossed it to Reid, catching Reid off guard. He dropped it and dived down to get it. "Call Pogue and tell him -- Shit!" Caleb swerved to miss the sudden figure in the street. Reid, who hadn't quite reached the phone was thrown forward, his chest painfully restrained by the seatbelt, his head smashing into the dash board with a sickening crack. The car slid to a stop and Reid was jerked back into his seat, grasping his head as blood colored his pale hands red.

Caleb quickly unbuckled his seatbelt and opened his door. He rose from the car and squinted into the darkness. He had seen something in that darkness. Something that oddly resembled human but there was nothing there. Caleb quickly glanced back inside the car, briefly catching a glimpse of Reid, who was still cradling his head, the blood obscurring his already blurry vision. "Reid," Caleb snapped but Reid wasn't listening. "Reid!" he shouted and the boy jumped. "Get the phone, call Pogue. There's something out there."

Caleb didn't wait for a response from Reid, forcing himself to trust the younger boy. He withdrew from the car and slammed the door shut. Reid jumped again at the sudden sound, shaking his head and wiping the blood from his eyes. He dove for the phone again, gripping it tightly in bloody hands. He drew back and quickly dialed Pogue's number.

"Caleb?" Pogue sounded concerned.

"Pogue --"

Reid visibly jumped for a third time as something crashed into the windshield, rocking the car. The windshield broke on impact, showering the seats and Reid with glass. The phone slipped from his fingers, but he dove for it again when he realized that the something on the windshield was Caleb. Caleb grunted and rolled off of the car.

"Reid? What the hell?" Pogue demanded, his voice growing more insistent. "Reid!" he shouted when he didn't receive an answer.

"Witch hunters," Reid breathed into the phone. "We're cornered. I think. You have to do something. Get the covenant, tell them there's witch hunters in town. At least three. Do you have a pen, I have their names."

"How'd you do that?" Pogue asked, his voice turning curious suddenly.

"How'd I do what? Get attacked?" Reid asked. "They ambused me. If they had just came at me from the front...one at a time -- I'm pretty sure I would have --"

"Their names," Pogue interrupted. "How'd you get their names, Reid."

"Oh," Reid mumbled. "They said their names. It's Charlie and Bob. I don't know the third. They get their orders from some dude named Marvin. And they knew my name," Reid said. "He called me Mr. Garwin."

"Don't say Caleb's name in public then."

"The book illustrates all of us, though," Reid commented.

"They don't have the book," Pogue reminded him.

"How do you know?" Reid asked.

"The book's still in the temple, Reid," Pogue told him gently.

"What if there's more than one copy?" Reid asked suddenly.

"Why would there be more than one copy?" Pogue murmured thoughtfully.

"It's like a grimoire," Reid said suddenly. "I've been doing some reading," he explained quickly. "What if the fifth blood line made their own copy, Pogue? What if this is them -- their revenge? What if they are the ancestors that taught the witch hunters our weaknesses and showed him our pictures and --"

Reid broke off as Caleb slammed into the car again, with so much force that he fell back off of it. "Reid?" Pogue asked, concern returning immediately.

"Get the covenant," Reid said quickly before closing the phone and dropping it onto the driver's seat. He shoved the door open and stumbled out. He hurried to Caleb's side but Caleb wasn't moving. "It's about fucking time somebody put you in your place, Danvers," Reid muttered as he knelt to check Caleb's condition. "Just wish they could've picked a better time."

"Ah," a distant voice tutted. "We meet again, Mr. Garwin." It was Bob. Reid was really starting to hate this Bob character. Bob was limping forward and Reid frowned, slowly rising to his feet. He'd had a broken ankle before too, after he'd once been shoved into Tyler, and the two had fallen down the stairs together. Tyler didn't have more than bruises that night, but Reid had a broken ankle and a concussion. Reid had twisted this man's ankle himself, and he knew that his ankle wouldn't be fit to walk on. Not without magic.

"Your ankle's broken," Reid commented dumbly.

"It's sprained," Bob countered, a smirk distorting his features.

"I felt the bone break," Reid argued, taking a challenging step forward.

"You're delusional, witch," Bob snapped, snapping his whip at the ground.

"You smell that?" Reid asked him, taking a deep breath. "Smells like a pine tree doesn't it? That smell is you -- and that witch behind you." Reid nodded past Bob, locking eyes with a figure that was shrouded in the fog. "You fucking hypocrite."

Bob cracked his whip again, his face screwing up in anger. As soon as the whip touched Reid it crumbled to dust. Reid hadn't even realized he'd tapped into the power. Bob whistled. "That's some power you've got there."

"Jealous?" Reid sneered. "How do you know my name?" He asked suddenly.

"I met you once," Bob revealed. "When you were nine; hair as white as snow, temper as hot as hell. I knew you'd prove difficult, but it's best to eliminate you before ascension." Bob cracked his whip at the ground again. "Your're weaker than Mr. Danver's. Especially since your wounded. Surrender and there doesn't have to be anymore pain."

"Until you burn me alive," Reid sneered. The fog that had shrouded the men behind Bob suddenly disappeared and Reid found his eyes glancing over Bob's shoulder. He caught a glimpse of the bartender, his nose caked in blood, probably half healed. And then there was good ol' Charlie, but Charlie looked a bit more roughed up than Reid had left him. There was a man beside Charlie that Reid hadn't ever seen before. But the man's eyes were black orbs and Reid felt himself shiver. "How'd you meet me?" He pressed.

"Business with your father," Bob answered truthfully. Reid cocked his head to the side and Bob smiled at him. "There used to be a time - a relapse - where witch hunters were not witch hunters. We had to contribute to society as modern men and women, and we lived peacefully beside you demons, even though we were aware. We befriended you, recruited you. And then there was a war, a few years ago."

"I didn't hear about no war," Reid commented.

"You were thirten," Bob pointed out. "Just coming into your own, too weak to fight. It was a secret war, where few died. It was a game of cat and mouse."

Reid's eyes snapped away from Bob's pointed gaze as the bartender sauntered forward. "Didn't you ever wonder what happened to dear old daddy? You think he came home all beaten or scared shitless just for fun?" Reid shook his head. He had questioned his father every single time. His father hadn't ever given him an answer. "You think he just disappeared because he hated the demon you'd became?" the bartender pressed, drawing closer to Reid. "Yeah, I know you're far more ruthless than any other member of the covenant," he added, his voice dropping to a whisper as he drew closer to the immobilized boy. "But it was your daddy that I caught. It was his bounty that fed my family for years. And it will be you that feeds them for the next decade."

"But he didn't hurt nobody," Reid reasoned, his voice barely a whisper. He could remember how his mother had laid awake night after night for a year straight, waiting for a husband that wouldn't ever walk through the front door again. Did she know the possibilities of his father's death? Is that what kept her awake everytime he left the house?

"I know." A smile was plastered across the bartender's pale face. "That doesn't change anything."

Reid could feel the fire burning inside of him, consuming him, whispering to him -- telling him to Use. To avenge. To satisfy not just himself but the father who died four years ago. Reid gritted his teeth and thrust his hands forward, making contact with the bartender's chest. A large, violent wave of energy left his palms and pushed against the bartender, sending him flying back. He landed at Bob's feet and didn't move. Reid had just engaged in a war, and the witch hunters and traitor each leapt to attention.

A whip caught Reid around the neck and he ground his teeth against the pain. He tried to unravel the whip with bloody hands but another whip caught his forearm and pulled it clear of the previous whip. A third whip caught a leg and ruthlessly jerked it out from beneath him, sending him crashing to the hard pavement beneath him. Bob appeared beside Reid, watching the twitching boy with something that oddly resembled amusement. Reid bit his tongue but couldn't stop the soft grunts and wimpers from escaping dried lips. Bob knelt beside him and touched his face. He didn't just touch the pale face, he cupped it, softly, gently, almost affectionately.

"Two for the price of one," Bob murmured softly. "Thank you for the help, Mr. Garwin." He reached forward and hit Reid with brass knuckles the boy hadn't even seen before impact. He briefly saw a bright light and then he was enveloped by a merciful darkness.


	3. they built the cages they put us in

A/N: I do intend to introduce Tyler to the story because...do I even need a reason? Pogue will also be very prominent. But...as I'm sure some may have caught on -- I like Reid just as much as the director of the covenant liked Caleb...so sorry if this isn't your cup of tea...but's mine... But I intend to make this a covenant story in which each member is included; and then some.

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First they Created sin so they could win

then they built the cages they could put us in

then they took away our tribes and gave us jail

Then they took away the earth and gave us hell.

- Corporate Avenger

Caleb jerked awake. His head was throbbing painfully, forcing a groan from dry lips as his hands attempted to comfort his his throbbing head. The quiet tug on his wrists alerted him to the fact that he was bound by a thick rope. It wasn't exactly a rope, but it mirrored the whips Caleb had seen the witch hunters using. He wasn't being electrocuted but he was sure that could change. Caleb sighed heavily as he lifted his gaze to get a look at the holding cell he was currently in. It wasn't exactly a room, as he came to realize. The ground was cold concrete beneath him, thick and hard; the walls were dark grey, the bricks chipped to a point that threatened collapse. Thick, short steps led up to a thick wooden door shrouded in darkness. It was a basement, or dungeon; same thing. It was cold and dank, and Caleb's wrists were tied together but he could move freely.

"Reid?" Caleb asked, his raw voice bouncing off of the crumbling walls encaging him. When the echo died out only silence greeted him. Caleb squinted into the darkness, his eyes roaming the room quickly before picking out Reid's form. Reid was curled in on himself, his head tilted back against the cool ground. Caleb couldn't see his wrists but was sure that Reid, too, was restrained. His ankle was connected to the ground, a shackle connected to a steel ring. Caleb rose shackily to his knees and crawled, feeling all but inferior, over to Reid. Closer, he could see that Reid's body was twitching, ever so slightly, as mild electricity continually ran through him.

Reid's usually fair hair was matted to his forehead by caked blood and dried sweat. His lips were pale, dried and painted red with blood. His arms had grazed the ground sometime during his previous scuffle and was bloody; the blood snaking its way down his arm to pool in his limp hand. It hadn't dried yet. Caleb's eyes paced back up Reid's wounded form to settle back on his face. There was a nasty cut along his right temple. It had swollen, the blood slipping down the side of his face and subsequent neck to bury itself in the shoulder of his shirt before finally drying. The cut was bright against the deep purple of the bruises on his pale face. "Reid?" Caleb called again, shaking Reid gently.

He pulled back quickly, hissing as he absorbed Reid's shock. Maybe it would be best for the both of them if Reid remained unconscious for as long as he could. Caleb tilted back on his heels, gazing down heavily at the unconscious boy. He waited there, his calm yet deep breathing suddenly loud in the silence.

Icy eyes shot open and Caleb felt himself recoil ever so slightly. Reid gasped loudly, but his gasp turned quickly into a deep groan of pain. He coughed violently, trying to curl up into a ball but that didn't seem to help him any. A soft wimper escaped his cracked lips as he tried to still the shaking of his body. He drew up his knees until he was in the fetile position and wrapped his arms around them to secure them into place. He clutched his pant legs until his knuckles turned white.

"Stop fucking staring." Reid's voice was harsh, but the words weren't as smooth as they had always been before. They were spaced out and soft grunts covered the momentary silence. "Get a plan."

"Reid -" Caleb's voice was softer than it'd ever been with Reid before. He reached a hand forward to console him but then hesitated.

"Whatever," Reid snapped, recoiling from Caleb's hovering hand. "Think of a plan -- and we'll be okay." He didn't sound so sure though. "Just...be a fucking leader."

Caleb was quiet for a moment. "My father taught me this...sort of ritual," he began tentatively. He was staring straight at Reid but the boy's eyes were squeezed shut in pain. "Before he gave into the addiction. It helped relieve pain. It helped take your mind away from your body...just put you somewhere else. Where nothing can touch you." He paused, still staring down at Reid's twitching form. "I could...you know...if you want."

A sad smile flickered across Reid's pale face. "Is this it?" He asked. His voice was still shaking but Caleb distinctly heard humor. "Our heart-to-heart. Where we sacrifice our comfort for somebody else. Is that what you're doing? Sacrificing your comfort."

"I was just trying to help," Caleb mumbled defensively. He hadn't had a real conversation with Reid in three years. The last conversation they had was about sex and how it was stupid for Reid to lose his virginity at such a young age. To an older woman. They just didn't talk. Not like this and Caleb didn't know what to do.

"Alright," Reid grunted, easing his eyes open. He lifted his pained gaze to look at Caleb's face. "Do it."

A flicker of a smile almost touched Caleb's lips. "You have to...uncoil. Just... like... lay flat, on your back." He paused and waited with astounding patience. It took Reid ten minutes to unfold his body, yelps escaping him as he struggled to relax. Caleb reached a hand forward hesitantly and gripped one of Reid's bound hands. He jumped at the initial shock of electricity but held onto him tightly. He felt Reid's hand tighten around his. "Okay," Caleb murmured gently. "Now, I need you to think of a memory. A moment in time that made you feel totally at ease. Happy. A moment that you wish you could just relive, over and over again. Forever."

Reid's eyes had flickered close as he rummaged through his mind for that perfect moment. They both knew that happiness didn't come into their lives as often as strangers thought it did. But he found that moment. And in that moment he was fourteen again. And his mother had just left to vacation in Paris. His father had just died and he was overly depressed and his mother didn't trust him alone so she carded him off to the Simms. Tyler was withdrawn and quiet. Even though he had the Power, he wasn't much of a son of Ipswich. It was only Reid who included him in their coversations; who invited him whereever they went; who insisted on playing video games primarily with him. It was only Reid who showed up at his house at all hours of the day (and night), insisting on hanging out. Tyler never knew what drew Reid to him. They were polar opposites, but in the beginning, when they were younger, he basked in the attention that only Reid gave him.

Reid had ignored Tyler for the first week but after Reid realized exactly what Tyler had to deal with he had softened for the boy (I'll post a side story that tells of those horrors...if you want...). It was in the weeks that followed Reid's revelation that Reid wished to relive. The absolute ease in which he lived beside Tyler. How Tyler had practically begged him to stay in his room, just one night. How Reid couldn't say no, not with those terrified blue eyes pleading with him, and Tyler's tight grip tugging on his arm. Reid knew that it was his fault that Tyler was so terrified. It was his fault that Tyler was showing it, and Reid hadn't regretted it. He forced Tyler to open up and Tyler's outer shield had crumbled immediately. He could remember distinctly how Tyler's heated body felt next to his when they slept in the same bed that night. It was he who had insisted on sharing the bed, because he refused to sleep on the ground beside the bed, and he refused adamently to let Tyler sleep on the ground beside his own bed. It was Reid who had thrown a careless arm around Tyler's waist, and forced Tyler to quit bogarting the pillow. It was he who noticed how close he really was to Tyler, close enough to smell the faint scent of shampoo in his hair. He knew how soft that hair felt, pressed against his cheek and he breathed in the scent. But it had been Tyler who hadn't complained. Who relaxed so completely against his body; who slept so completely for the first time in months. And then that one night turned into a month and then another month, and then the entire summer.

Reid wanted to go back to that. He wanted Tyler to ask him for help. He hated seeing the pain that seemed to devour Tyler's relunctant gaze, but he wanted Tyler to need him again. To trust him. It seemed like he was withdrawing. He never told Reid anything anymore. He didn't seem to trust him anymore and it irritated Reid to no end. But he held on tightly to that memory and shoved his present dilemma from his mind.

"Take a deep breath," Caleb whispered beside Reid, managing to break through the fog of nostalgia without shattering it completely. Reid took a deep breath. "And another." He did. "And another." Caleb's voice seemed to fade away but Reid took another deep breath, and then another, and then another, until his pain disappeared as he relived that certain time he spent with Tyler; as he relived each conversation and saw each facial expression. His concentration faded but his breathing was still slow, deep, seemingly deliberate. And Caleb remained kneeling beside him, silent.

Reid's body still jerked with electricity, but his face was slack, almost peaceful. His lips were closed, but not pressed into a fine line of concentration as it had been before. He didn't look anything like Reid. He was suddenly somebody else. And as this somebody else, he was painless. Fearless. Healed.


	4. The Last song

A/N: So I was in an updating mood. I've got two chapters for the side story -- _Don't care _up. You should go read it and review it. This is the first chapter with Tyler Simms in it. He's out of character in this chapter, I know this. As is Pogue. But this is a rather extreme circumstance...and they're supposed to be out of character. This is just a background chapter. But I didn't know how else to move forward the plot (without including cut scenes...which I hate doing). I thought it was necessary to flesh out the history of the covenant and their witch hunts, so please bare with me. I've added a second Covenant and yay more characters. I'm not setting anybody up with the main characters -- even Kate and Sarah seem to be absent. Sorry...but I hated those characters. They were pathetically one dimensionally and horribly fake. Their presence would make my stories sound cheesy and I hate cheese...I thought it was necessary to say that Ipswich wasn't all that held witches. Others existed. And in times of dire need -- such as witch hunts -- it is necessary for them to draw together and unite as one force. So...please don't hate me.

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_It is a grave error to suppose that a dictatorship rules a nation by means of strict, rigid laws which are obeyed and enforced with rigorous, military precision. Man could endure the harshes edicts, provided these edicts were known, specific and stable; it is not the known that breaks men's spirits, but the unpredictable._

_ -- Ayn Rand (I'm sorry...it's just the quotes for these chapters are supposed to be semi-serious. And Ayn Rand's kind've all I've got...)_

The Convenant of silence has existed since the Salem witch trials. Five distinct blood lines had abandoned their homes, their lives, their entire existence in Salem and founded their own village. Ipswich. And the Covenant was able to break apart, be solitary once more, until the village was discovered and populated. With strangers suddenly within their vicinity, the Covenant realized that now was not the time to abandon old values -- values that had kept them alive all these years. They will always need their Covenant because humans were predictable. Dangerously so. And foolish right down to the point of tears. They would never be safe because they could never be normal; they never quite managed to trick themselves into thinking that maybe, just maybe, they could ignore the siren call of the Power. Maybe they didn't really need it. But to live without it was like punching a hole right over your heart and vowing to live the rest of your suddenly meaningless life with that chuck of your flesh messing. To merely deny the call was to live as an empty shell. Wasn't that worst than death himself?

But they were not the only covenant to come from Salem. They did not flee alone, in fear and panic. There were two other covenants. One of justice and one of peace. Those covenants, much like the covenant of silence, wanted to live in realitive solitude -- but they also wanted things above secrecy. They wanted to be able to coexist with humanity and immerse themselves in the eseence that was humanity. They wanted to be normal above all else and they thoroughly succeeded. Until the year of 1997. That was when the witch hunters got their first tip. An execution within the Covenant of justice. And that secular tip exposed the covenant of justice and destroyed it completely. Or so has been accepted (dun dun dunnnn...(!))

Fleeing, once more, the Covenant of peace stumbled upon Ipswich and sensed a greater power within the village. The first line they found was Garwin -- a blood line that was already predisposed to addiction. A line that radiated Power even when no one was using it. Some thought it was a curse, how a Garwin could never turn down the urge. There had always been rumors that this happened merely because John Garwin, the first recorded in the line, actually managed to escape hanging merely by tapping into his power and simply disappearing. It was wrong to use their power for personal gain, and thus they were destined to use the Power for personal gain forever -- until it killed them. The first line found was Garwin, James Garwin in his manor -- where he was supposed to be protected. In 2000, when the covenant of peace found him, James was merely 36 years old. But his blond hair already had tinges of grey, and his laugh lines had already turned to wrinkles. His body shook sometimes with the effort to resist the urges, and sometimes he succeeded; sometimes it shook so badly that his son, generally oblivious to all things short of the immediate implosion of planet earth, would question him about it. But he'd shrug it off and tell his son to _never _Use. Ever. He thought his son didn't notice the slight limp he seemed to have acquired over night, or how his laughter often times turned into a raspy cough. How rare that laughter did become. He thought his son couldn't smell the death that ligered with the power radiating off of him.

James Garwin had refused to expose his own Covenant, a covenant that he himself had fallen out of touch with; a covenant that shunned him, but he did agree to help them in their war. And with time, so did his Covenant. Because the war was not that of the covenant of peace's -- it was that of all witches. Divided and they'll fall. Except even with unity they crumbled. Full fledged war began on July 25, 2003. The Covenant of peace lost three of their six members to this war. And the Covenant of Silence technically lost one of their four members to the war. Another disappeared and a third succumbed to addiction. An addiction that had never appeared before in the Danvers line within the previous four hundred years. Addiction was prominent in all of their features though, except for Charles Perry. He always held the power at arms length, as had Leroy Simms. But even Leroy was on the edge of that great plunge when he abandoned his purpose in life, his family and his covenant.

But here, in this basement, these two Covenants reunited once more. There were ten of them, including Tyler and Pogue. But only four of them were ascended and Charles Perry's grasp on the power was slipping away the longer he resisted the urge. After a sudden dose of reality in 2003, the remaining members of the covenant of peace each took extensive precautions, such as learning how to weild their powers and how to physically defend themselves should their powers somehow fail. They were a different line of witches, ones that tapped into the power differently. There were two males and one female in the previous generation of the covenant and their children received their powers when they turned thirteen. Their first son and their first daughter each received their separate yet similar powers. Each member had a child. And they were all crowded in the small basement, sitting patiently and watching the frustrated Pogue pacing before them.

"Well?" Pogue asked impatiently. He had called his own father, the remaining active member of the Covenant. And his father had called some people - the Covenant of peace and now the temple was full of random strangers. And Tyler. Tyler had left his dead aunt's side to return home directly after Pogue's rather intense phone call. She was supposed to be buried within the next few days and Tyler was going to miss it. He was sitting on one of their stone chairs, hunched forward with his head buried in his hands. Pogue was currently pacing in front of the group of strangers, glancing up every few minutes to glare at them. They sure were peaceful. It was beginning to piss him off. "Well?" He asked again.

"Relax, son," Charles Perry commanded. He was immersed within the group of strangers but his deep voice still managed to find Pogue.

"What are we gonna do?" Pogue repeated his previous question, but he knew none of them were any closer to a substantial answer than he, himself, was. "What-" He began again, his voice growing louder with pent up frustration.

"We got it," Tyler snapped. Pogue broke off and glared over at Tyler. He distinctly heard muffled laughter, but didn't feel like searching for the stranger who dared to laugh at a time like this.

"So, let's just sit here," Pogue snapped bitterly, his heated gaze still trained on Tyler. "That sounds like an awesome plan. Let's see how it works." He sat down heavily on a stone chair and stared angrily into the crowd of strangers. "Who knows. Maybe the plan'll work before they're dead."

"What do you expect us to do?" A boy Pogue vaguely remember as being name Marshal...something. He wasn't taller than Pogue, or bigger than him, and yet he stood there with this calm sort of strength. Still, unmoving, like he had all the time in the world. Like there weren't people at risk at this very moment in time. His fists were buried in the pockets of faded jeans and his head dipped slightly toward his dark t-shirt. His hair hung in his face, loose brown curles that seemed unruly even when he bothered to brush them into some form of order. Dark eyes pierced Pogue. The crowd, still unmoving, seemed to fade away until all Pogue saw was this boy, this kid who dared to challenge him.

He was on his feet without making the conscious decision to move. "Something!" He shouted at him.

"Thanks for the help." It was another kid, this time a female. A female who mirrored his own age, but she was shorter than he, thinner. Her long dark hair was pulled away from her face into a loose pony tail. Her face was drawn into a deep frown that never seemed to disappear. She had bags under her eyes and a bored expression. Her lips were cracked and peeling, pale against the sudden tan of her face. Her clothes, much like Marshal's, looked outdated and over used, but she managed to look a bit rougher than he.

Pogue glared at her. "At least I'm trying," he snapped, poking her hard in the chest.

The girl seemed unflinching and returned his heated glare. "Yeah," she drawled. "Your trying isn't worth a damn. So shut up and sit down." Pogue's glare deepened and he took a menacing step forward. He could feel the anger coursing through his body and oddly felt the urge to Use.

"This is actually counter-productive." The girl, a female who Pogue didn't even bother to catch the name of, jerked her head to the side, somehow managing to tear her heated gaze from Pogue's. Tyler had spoken. He had lifted his head and stared at the pair with unreadable eyes. "Why don't we just lay bait?" He added, as he rose to his feet and slowly made his way over to Pogue.

"Bait?" It was an older man that spoke this time, a man that had only been introduced as Shadow. He appeared at Tyler's shoulder but noone saw him move.

"Stop chasing them and stand still," a younger girl added, she appeared beside Tyler too. Her face was excited, fresh with youth. Her eyes shone as she watched Tyler closely. "Let them come and get us."

"Yeah," Tyler agreed, glancing down at her. Like those around her, this girl wore clothes that didn't quite fit her, but her clothes seemed to take a different tone. As opposed to their dark colors, her colors were more earthy. Her hair was cut short and stuck out in all directions. It was a sharp red color and seemed to match the deep green of her eyes well. As opposed to those she was immersed in, her face alone was lit up like a light bulb.

"Who's the bait?" It was that kid, Marshal, again.

"It has to be one of us," Pogue commented, the frustration and anger suddenly disappearing. "Nobody knows the other covenant is here." He was talking directly to Tyler but the younger boy didn't seem to notice. "So, it's you or me."

"I'll be the bait," Tyler told him quietly. Out of the Covenant, it was Tyler who used his powers the least. It was Tyler who had a handle on his powers the least. But Pogue wasn't far behind him.

"We need a plan," a rough female voice added. The only elder female witch present. Maybellene Connor. Her son, the boy that mirrored both Tyler and Pogue's age, called her Bella, but nobody else dared to shorten her name. To them, she was merely Connor. "We need to be precise," she continued as the crowd parted for her. There was an unspoken sense of respect within the covenant that even her son had to obey. "There can be no murder. Not ours, not theirs. If we kill even one of theirs, we respark their dying fires. We have to be precise down to the point of perfection."

"When are we not precise?" A younger boy asked, flashing her a toothy grin. Jacob Ozbourne, known merely as Ozzy to his Covenant. He had just gotten his powers two years previous and was still slightly uneasy with them, but he used them with a vigor that only Reid could counter. His question was met with disbelieving murmurs and short barks of laughter. The girl beside him, merely a year older, elbowed him hard in the ribs and gave him a warning look.

"I'm deadly serious," Maybellene told Jacob in a firm voice. "No more experimentations." Jacob's grin stretched into a cheeky smile forcing a disapproving frown from the older woman. "Don't do something you _know _you can't accomplish. When we get out there, we need to have our eyes peeled wide open. Our ears perceptive to _all _forms of life. Notice everything or fail. Is that understood?" Maybellene's eyes were trained in on Jacob as she addressed the crowd of witches. There were murmurs of affirmatives and Jacob's smile never faultered. "Jacob?"

"Yes, ma'am," he murmured coolly. "No experimentations. Take the fun right out of learning," he mumbled, dropping his gaze from her heated glare.

"I assume I don't need to warn you boys about being cautious," Maybellene added, moving her heated gaze from the smaller boy and onto Tyler and Pogue.

"No," Tyler agreed. "Not us." Their thoughts had settled on Reid. It sure would be nice to see an older woman put him in his place. Hopefully she'd get the chance before the covenant disappeared. "So...that's the plan then?"

"We're winging it," the younger girl informed him brightly. June Stryker. She was smiling up at him and he wanted to ask her why she was smiling. Now definitely wasn't a smiling time. And yet here she was, smile stretched right across her face.

"Sounds awesome," he mumbled and her smile widened, flashing white teeth that contrasted greatly with the tan of her face.


	5. Out of solitude

A/N: The italics to begin with were memories -- Reid's previous instructions, primarily as he taught Tyler to play pool. Maybe I'll actually cover those lessons in 'Don't Care'. And then they turn into his current instructions. So the last chapter was the first chapter in my entire covenant history in which I did not have Reid Garwin. And it pained me, folks. That's not why his voice appears in this chapter...just a thought. I listened to Johnny Cash while writing this so if it sucks -- it's all his fault. I proof read and edited this chapter to Eminem though...so if it sounds kind've bipolar...sorry...

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_When we honestly ask ourselves which person in our lives means the most to us, we often find that it is those who, instead of giving much advice, solutions, or cures, have chosen rather to share our pain and touch our wounds with a gentle and tender hand. The friend who can be silent with us in a moment of despair or confusion, who can stay with us in an hour of grief and bereavement, who can tolerate not knowing, not curing, not healing, and face with us the reality of our powerlessness, that is a friend who cares. _

_ - Henri Nouwen_

Tyler had gone to Nicky's. Alone for the first time in his life and a sudden wave of sorrow washed over him as he pushed open the front door. He'd driven, alone, in his hummer and now he was forced to enter this bar, once again -- alone. The silence was thick enough to strangle someone with. The purpose was to lure out the witch hunters, in a public like place. And once he had them in his sight, he'd merely up and leave, hoping they followed and cornered him in the parking lot behind the building...where he'd parked. And within that otherwise isolated lot, the remaining active witches were stragetically hidden. This plan made Tyler uneasy. Sure, it was his plan to set bait, but to lure them out into the back lot had been Marshal's plan. He had assured Tyler that he'd never be out of their sight. They couldn't accompany him in the bar because the hunters had their pictures, it'd give away their intentions before their plan could unfold. But he'd assured Tyler that they would be watching him, and at the first signs of danger, they'd step in. He'd told Tyler that he wouldn't be fighting this alone. Yet some how his assurances didn't quite make Tyler feel any better. Not like they did when a certain blonde would assure him.

Tyler ordered a coke and went straight to the pool tables. He wasn't sure if this was the right course of action. How did he know they would be playing pool? It didn't matter, he played pool when he went to Nicky's. It was like a second nature. It was a slow crowd but either way, he'd never worked one alone. A man with a definite beerbelly eyed Tyler the moment he'd approached. "Care for a game?" He admonished as soon as Tyler was within earshot.

A slow grin lit up Tyler's features as he attempted to channel a one Reid Garwin. "Sure," he said in a slow drawl. "How much?" Reid had taught Tyler that it was always wiser to ask the opponent how much was on the table, unless that opponent was Aaron Abbott. Tyler Simms had deeper pockets than Reid. His mother threw money at him to keep him content, and Reid had yelled at him the first time he tried to give that money back. _Never give money back, no matter how much you've already got. _Reid, on the other hand, didn't have nearly as much money as people proclaimed he did, not that he'd ever admit that. Reid's mother, albeit rich after her husband's death, clinged to the wealth with all she had. She'd buy Reid the essentials, but when it came to food and cars he was on his own. Yes, that's right -- Reid Garwin had a job. And only Tyler knew how good at that job he was. No, he wasn't a prostitute, though the thought frequently occurred to him. Who wouldn't pay to sleep with Reid Garwin?

"Fifty too much for you, kid?" the balding man asked with a smirk that made Tyler's stomach churn.

"No, fifty's fine," Tyler answered promptly. He rummaged through his pocket and pulled out five tens. _Never carry high bills, it makes you look rich. Never pull out all of your money, it draws attention to yourself_. He tossed the bills onto the center of the pool table as the older man racked the balls together. The man gesture for Tyler to break but Tyler shrugged it off. "You break."

And the man did break. He buried a stripe into a corner pocket and immediately took aim for another ball. He was good, and managed to bury two more balls before he screwed up his shot. He wasn't planning on hustling Tyler and that brought a soft smirk to the boy's lips. _Never play with your A game. It scares off potential lambs. And then who are we supposed to slaughter? Abbott? _ But then Tyler's head jerked up and away from the older man's prying eyes until something immersed in the faceless crowd caught his eye. _Never lose yourself in the game. Keep a wary eye on the strangers that surround you. _There was another man, a buff bald man, within the crowd staring at him. It wasn't just a passing glance, either, it was a hardcore glare and it sent a shiver down Tyler's spine. "Kid," the man across the table barked and Tyler jumped. _Don't show fear. It makes you look weak. People take advantage of the weak, baby boy. _"You gonna shoot or what?"

"Oh," Tyler mumbled and bent over the table. He lined up a shot with perfect precision even though he could feel the man watching him. Not just watching the shot, but watching him. _**Always **__be cautious. Nothing is a coincidence._ He was staring straight at the younger boy's eyes and Tyler bit back the smirk. _Don't cheat unless you have to. There's no honor in that. Never cheat if you think they're staring at your eyes, no matter how paranoid you __**think **__you are. _He dipped his head in a half concealing way and his eyes flashed as he bumped the cue ball. He knew the man caught the fire in his eyes, fire that disappeared too quickly for anyone who wasn't specifically looking for it to notice. With that start, Tyler quickly cleaned the table without providing the man with a second turn, committing an act that Reid had specifically told him to never do. He did what he had came to do and now it was time to wrap it up and get away from the witchhunters as soon as possible. _Don't act arrogant after the first win. Act humble, like maybe it was a fluke. It's easier to coax them into playing another game that way. People hate losing. That's always an advantage_. "Rotten luck. For you," Tyler murmured kindly as he reached to pick up the hundred from the table.

A hand closed around his outstretched wrists and suddenly the balding man was beside him. Tyler jerked back but the man held on tight to his wrist and forced him to remain in that uncomfortable position. _Don't show emotion. Not on your face. Relax. Look calculative. You cannot look surprised, or worried. Those are the two worst emotions to show. Never demand a rematch. Act like it didn't matter, like you didn't lose anything. But when they demand a rematch, never turn it down. Beat them once, and you can beat them whenever -- the thought's already in their head. _"Rematch," he proposed in a grim tone, suddenly devoid of whatever cheerfullness it had contained before. "Double or nothing."

"No thanks," Tyler told him kindly. "I've really gotta get going." He jerked on his arm hard but the man's grasp was steel. _Jesus, baby boy. You're a fucking witch. Start acting like one_. He knew it would bruise and grimaced at the sharp jolt of pain. He cocked his head to the side. That comment didn't sound like a memory. "What are you doing?" He demanded. "Get off."

"Not yet," another voice murmured in a deep rumble.

Tyler jerked as he felt a presence behind him, pressing up against his exposed back._ Gang Bang. _"Get off," he hissed urgently at the man holding his wrist, tugging on his arm for emphasis. _Talk them down. Use that fancy logic of yours, if you're gonna be such a pussy about actually Using_. "You can't do anything in here," he added, grimacing at the taunting edge to his smooth voice. Like mockery could ever help a situation. _It could. Scare them before they scare you._ "So quit being stupid and let go of my arm."

"This one's a bit more reasonable than the last," the balding man murmured softly, as his gaze flickered from Tyler's cold eyes to the man behind him.

"I wonder if this one'll scream like the other one," the deep rumble barked as a fat hand snaked up Tyler's ribs. Tyler jumped at the sudden contact and his knee hit the pool table hard. _Chillax. Within public there can be no privacy. They can't do anything too traumatizing yet. _He grimaced again, staring hard at the man before him. "You know that kid, don't you, pretty? The blonde one." _Dude. He just called you pretty._

Tyler knew the balding man before him could see his face change drastically as realization hit him like a ton of bricks. _Don't fucking show emotion. You know I'm not dead_. They were talking about Reid. _**There's worst things than death.**_ "Let go of me," Tyler told him in a dangerously low voice. _Atta boy._ "We can take this outside. I'll make you bleed to satisfy that blood lust of yours."

The deep voice behind him barked a deep laugh and a thick arm snaked around his waist, jerking him erect and pressing him firmly against the taller man's chest. _Don't go like that. Headbutt him. Damnit, Tyler. You know how to fucking fight back._ Tyler swung his head back hard and felt the buff man's nose give way beneath his skull. The man cried out in pain and fell away_. Use the pain to fuel the fight_. Tyler sprang forward, crashing into the balding man, the momentum sending them both crashing to the ground. Tyler's knee hit the ground painfully hard and he cried out at the sudden pain. _Ignore it. Move, Tyler. Now! _Tyler jerked back as the balding man swung at him.

Tyler heard Reid's voice laughing in his head. "What?" He panted as he stumbled to his feet. _Pay attention to your environment. Did you seriously forget the lessons we learned the Karate Kid? _"What about it?" He hissed as he glanced around the bar. Nicky had disappeared and a few people were watching him intently, but the vast majority of the crowd was dancing to..._Fucking Spice Girls. How perfect is this? If you wanna be my lover...then you have to get with my friends. Fine with me...I'd get with all of them..._

"Goddamnit, Reid," Tyler snapped. "That helps. So fucking much." _Don't hate. _He dropped back, the balding man suddenly on his feet. He could see the buff man stirring as he quickly made his way to the back door. He threw it open, and limped down the three stone steps. The back lot was deserted, but it was supposed to be. _They're waiting. You're not alone. Such insecurities, baby boy._

He strode quickly to his hummer, a hand quickly reaching for the door handle. _Duck_. The word was a quick hiss and Tyler complied. A baton swung past his head and shattered the window of his door. The glass showered him, cutting through his jeans as he rolled to his feet, spinning around to identify the two hunters standing several feet away. His hands were bloody and he brushed the broken glass off onto his jeans. Silence. Tyler had stepped aside, slowly toward the back of the vehicle. _Move, baby boy. _And he dropped to his knees, grimacing at the sudden rush of pain jsut as the whip hit the window above him, shattering it. "Goddamnit," he swore, bounding to his feet. _It's just a car, baby boy_. "You don't mean that," he hissed scornfully. _Fine, whatever. It was like a part of the family... _"It was."

"Where's the fourthe one?" It was a soft voice, and Tyler's head jerked up. He hadn't noticed a third hunter.

"None of your damn business," he snapped_. Watch it, baby. You're in the neighborhood of swooning ladies, here._

Another hunter materialized, suddenly close to Tyler, and his head snapped in that direction. The fourth hunter whistled, flashing an ugly smirk. _Ugh_. "Not quite the mouth the blond had. Evidently snakes aren't raised with manners."

Tyler felt a laugh bubbling in his throat, but the sound never came. "America must be full o' em then." _Tyler Simms. Sarcastic? Where the fuck is the apolocalypse?_

A number of things happened next. A whip caught Tyler around the neck and Reid's voice disappeared from his head in a sharp yelp. A rush of people suddenly appeared, a few he vaguely recognized, but a lot more he didn't. _Ambush_. The word was choked, distorted, but it was Reid's pained voice.

The whip was pulled taunt and he stumbled forward. A baton hit him hard in the ribs and he jerked back as a sharp shock raced through his body. It was much more intense than the whip and it made his eyes water. The baton came down again, igniting a fire within his hip and his legs collapsed. He could feel Reid's voice trying to direct him but he couldn't make it out as he hunched over on the pavement. The baton crashed down on his exposed back and he cried out.

Suddenly the whip fell slack and the man wielding the baton disappeared. _Destroy the whip. _Reid's voice was grim, strained, almost foreign. Numb fingers unraveled the whip, his eyes quickly bleeding black. "No," he told the voice quietly, his voice gruff as he stumbled to his feet. "I think we're due for a few weapons. Imitation cannot be a sin." There was a sharp whistle in his head. _Well done, grasshopper. You deserve a promotion. Hm. Maybe to cricket. Or you could be a flying beetle. Or hey -- how about a bumble bee? That sounds manly right? _"Thanks..." He'd been a grasshopper for as long as he could remember. But now...he felt like he could be a bumble bee. A slow smile entertained his lips as he cracked the whip.


	6. They Will All Confess

A/N: I've decided Reid and Tyler aren't gay in this ficlet. So they may seem close in the side story, but it won't ever be anything more.

Please review.

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_Why do you search so diligently for sorcerers? Take the Jesuits, all the Religious Orders and torture them. They will confess. If some deny, repeat it a few times. They will confess. Should a few still be obstinate, exorcize them, shave them, only keep on torturing. They will give in. Take the Doctors, the Bishops of the Church. They will all confess._

_ - Friedrich Von Spee_

Reid jerked back, gasping loudly as the complete awareness of his body overwhelmed him. He felt heavy, solid, weak. His body was trembling, his head was throbbing and his ribs were on fire. The electrical cuffs had been turned down a notch, so that they only sent shocks through his body when he tried to Use. He was still bound, just as Caleb was. They still couldn't do magic, and Caleb refused to let Reid try and heal them, even after Reid assured him that he didn't even need magic to heal. His muscles were sore, stiff. His skin was darker with grime and dirt, tinted maroon with caked blood. His hair was dimmer, his eyes duller. He had been growing quieter, withdrawing in on himself so quickly that Caleb was growing worried.

He hadn't meant to contact Tyler, but the boy popped into his mind just as Reid was finally drifting off to sleep. And then he saw everything clearly, much as if it were a dream, yet something adamently told him that this was no dream. He didn't want to leave Tyler, especially not now that the fight had just started, but the kick to his ribs brought him sharply back to his senses. Telepathy was generally draining, and too strong for those who hadn't yet ascended to perform as it was. Reid didn't feel severely drained, just tired and hungry. He recoiled, trying to shield his ribs with bound hands. He failed, and another kick slipped past his arms. A cry of pain escaped his chapped lips.

Rough hands tugged on his arms, forcing him to unsteady feet. He was pulled back slightly, as more men rushed Caleb, treating him with similar hostility. It created an odd feeling, seeing Caleb manhandled like that, it was slightly unnerving. Hopeless. "What the fuck?" Reid demanded when a thick silence settled between the occupants of the room.

"Trial," a dark voice barked. The crowding witch hunters parted and a man stepped through. A man that was unfamiliar to both boys appeared, but Reid knew immediately who this man was. "Starting with you," he stated, gesturing toward Caleb. "You, Garwin, get the pleasure of watching."

"That's awfully kind of you," Reid muttered. An elbow was buried deep in his gut and the air whoosed out of him with a quiet 'ooomph.'

"Cretins don't get to talk," the witch spat.

"And yet your lips are moving and sound's coming out," Caleb replied sarcastically. Reid was slightly alarmed to hear the strength in the boy's voice. It was steel, hard, more venomous than Reid had ever heard it before. And that was a major statement.

The witch spun on Caleb, shooting daggers at him with black eyes. "I have repented," he spat. "I have been forgiven."

"Yeah," Reid sneered. "Have fun being a whore for these miserable humans." He gasped deeply as another elbow stole his breath, jarring an array of bruises across his abdomen. He forced a smile to his face, his dull eyes trained on the witch's. "You'll still die. Hope the humans are worth it. Traitor."

The witch stepped forward in a single fluid motion and punched Reid hard. The blonde head snapped back and he stiffled a grunt. He could feel the warm liquid escape his nose, and when he darted out a tongue, almost hesitantly, he could taste it. And then the witch punched him again and a grunt slipped past Reid's bloodied lips. A hand fisted in his hair and his head was wrenched back painfully hard. "I will take pleasure in watching you burn," the witch told him darkly.

"Not if I burn you first," Reid hissed.

The witch tugged on Reid's head, making it harder to swallow, to breathe, and Reid felt his eyes close. It seemed like the pain was intensifying. The pain in the pit of his stomach, the sharp stabs of hunger. The bruises that marred his fair skin, and colored his abdomen purple. The cuts that disfigured his face, the scrapes along his arms that hurt whenever he moved. And then there was his headache. A sharp pain that never seemed to disappear completely, only growing greater the longer the witch pulled on his hair.

"Who are you?" Caleb demanded, his voice unshakeable. Caleb's face was devoid of emotion, his cheek swollen and red.

The witch's eyes were drawn from Reid's face to glare back at Caleb. "I am not of your Covenant," he murmured. Reid swallowed hard, trying to pull away, but the witch jerked his head back into place and he grimaced at the fresh wave of pain. "My covenant is dead. I, however, am not. I strive to survive."

"This isn't survival," Caleb assured him. He stood impassively between two massive hunters who clung to his arms as if he might slip away. "You're helping them kill your own people! How can you live with yourself?"

"Because it is not I that they are killing," the witch sneered, frowning slightly, his eyes still trained on Reid.

"Not yet," Caleb agreed.

"Shut up," the witch spat, his fist tightening in Reid's hair, tight enough to draw a sharp intake of air from the boy. "I don't expect you to understand, Danvers," he sneered, staring intently at Reid's face. "Your covenant is foolish. Willing to sacrifice themselves -- compromise their own locations for strangers. They deserved what they got," he hissed.

"Shut up," Reid snapped, struggling against the witch, but the hunters gripped his arms tightly and the witch twisted his hand. A burning sensation spread rapidly acrosss the blonde's scalp but he ignored it. "Coward," he tried to shout. "You fucking coward." He could feel the lump rising in his throat, the stinging sensation behind his eyes.

The witch barked a laugh, his hot breath flushing Reid's cheek red. "Touchy subject, Garwin?" He sneered. "I suppose you like to think your father died a hero. Suppose you don't take him for the coward he was in life. He was no martyer. He threw himself at death -- who gives a shit about the few lives he 'saved'"

"I do," Reid growled, jerking hard against the witch's hand. The burning sensation intensified and Reid's vision blurred. He squeezed his eyes shut, against the pain, against the tears. "He died a hero," he hissed in a hoarse whisper, trying to turn away.

Cruel laughter erupted from more people than just the witch. "Your father was a fool. Too weak to control the Power. Too foolish to wield it adequately. He died because he wanted to. Too scared, too tired to live. He abandoned you. Long before his death."

"Shut up," Reid whispered. "You don't know what you're talking about." He felt a hand on his chin; a hand that was gripping his chin hard, forcing his face toward the voice.

"I was there," the witch murmured. "I _do _know what I'm talking about. He was real close to leaving his family, like Simms. But then an over eager hunter broke the treaty by going after his family. His and Simms. You boys were always so close. Your father never said anything, but sometimes he worried about your manhood. Worried that you may very well be -"

"Stop it," Reid told him quietly. His body was tense, his eyes squeezed shut, his cheeks flushed, his mind working strenuously to remember just who this overzealous witch hunter had been. So many people seemed to have appeared in his history without him ever acknowledging them. Why hadn't he noticed this witch when he'd first met him? Why couldn't he recognize him now? Caleb remained silent, almost too shocked to do anything. Reid was unshakeable. Usually. No matter what he said to the blonde, he couldn't ever get past his armor. But this witch had slipped right past it, like it didn't exist at all.

"No," the witch told him gently. "You really want to take a gander at your history book? I can tell you all about your old man, through eyes untainted by childish idolization. Like when he left at night, it wasn't to the Simms'. No, he and Simms stopped talking long ago. He was shunned from the covenant; they liked to call him a liability. Too wild, reckless, impulsive. Sound familiar? He left at night to get his fix. Of the power and alcohol. Those times that he'd hit you, he was really drunk. And he felt really bad about it the next day, especially when he saw the bruises he left. Couldn't ever heal those, could you, Garwin? It was because of the magic behind them. But your brothers never seemed too determined to figure out just why you kept coming to school with new bruises every week. New broken bones. They wanted you to be the bad boy so badly, more than you yourself wanted to be. Your father didn't seem too care enough to remove himself from the situation. Obviously, you weren't his number one priority." The witch paused, but Reid was silent, eyes still screwed shut, trying to ignore his inner turmoil and the accusing stare he was receiving from Caleb. "And your mother? She wasn't even on his radar. She knew it too. Stopped loving him years before his death. That's why she never told you what she knew was true, that's why she couldn't bring herself to comfort you when you cried at night after his death. That's why she waited months to have his funeral and why she never cried once in all that time. No, she could just pack right up, and leave the country. And all of her problems behind. Like her kid -- forever the constant reminder of the life she had forfeited. You never told her what happened at Simms' house, did you? What your best friend's father did to you. How that man replaced your father's death in your nightmares _every _night. Never felt so scared, so dirty, so used in your entire life. You still see him, don't you, Garwin?"

"Okay," Reid snapped suddenly. "I got it," he added, struggling against the hunters again. "You sure showed me. Now stop it. Just hurry up and kill us."

The witch laughed, his eyes flickering to Caleb ever so briefly. "They never told you, did they, Danvers? I never noticed just how distant this little covenant of yours really is. All these secrets." He tsked. Caleb was silent but Reid could feel his eyes on him. "He never told you that he doesn't party all night merely because he's...a party animal. But because he's too scared to fall asleep. And when he's shitfaced, sometimes he doesn't see him. Bet you never told Simms how that incident affected you, did you Garwin? No. That'd destroy your whole bad boy M.O. You're supposed to be untouchable. If only they knew how weak you really were. How easily you bruise. How every fight you have with Danvers hurts you far more severely than he could ever know, but you need those fights because that's the closest to affection you'll ever receive from him. You're a marshmellow, Reid Garwin."

Reid couldn't stop himself, he couldn't put the power off any longer. He'd never been able to adequately control his anger, but he'd never felt so overwhelmed by it before. His eyes bled black quickly and the witch disappeared. As did the hunters. They were flung across the room. He briefly realized that Caleb had felt the blast as well, and then he cried out as a sharp pain ran through his body. He crumbled, his body shaking with strong electric shocks.

And then he heard it. At first it was a quiet wisper, something easily imagined. It was Tyler's voice, uncertain, yet gentle, almost melodious, but then it grew louder, as if he knew Reid couldn't quite hear him. _Pain is in the mind, remember. Ignore it._


	7. Good? by what standard?

A/N: So...this chapter is setting up for a bit of a twist. Pogue will be in the next chapter. Please read and review. I apologize for what I say about the bible -- it's just a view of a charcter...a very soft spoken and adorable character.

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**Through centuries of scourges and disasters, brought about by your code of morality, you have cried that your code had been broken, that the scourges were punishment for breaking it, that men were too weak and too selfish to spill all the blood it required. You damned men, you damned existence, you damned this earth, but never dared to question your code. Your victims took the blame and struggled on, with your curses as reward for their martyrdom - while you went on crying that your code was noble, but human nature was not good enough to practice it. And no one rose to ask the question: Good? - by what standard?**

**-- Ayn Rand**

_Pain is in the mind, remember? Ignore it._

Reid frowned. The voice sounded amused, almost distorted beyond recognition. _You never told me you had nightmares_. The voice mirrored another voice, one he remembered. It was his own. He'd said the exact same words to Tyler when they were both fourteen. (see _Don't care; chapter two_) When he had first met Tyler's unfortuante stepfather. "Mind your own business," Reid grunted as he stumbled to his feet. He felt drained, sick and frustrated. The room was spinning and he felt nauseous, holding out bound hands in an attempt to steady himself. It didn't work and he stumbled back into a hunter who seized his arm roughly. _You shouldn't have done that Reid. What happened to never showing emotions? _Sometimes the well placed mask slips and falls. And breaks. Sometimes it consumes it's wearer, devouring him whole and leaving nothing behind, so when it finally breaks, as it always does, the person left behind is just an empty shell of what he might have been. Vacant. Reid wasn't sure which would be better. Either way -- neither would be who he had already unwittingly became. Hardcore, bluntly honest to a fault, but loyal above all else. Could that really be who Reid was? Or was that just the face of the mask? Something he wore, much like jewelry or blondes. Something inside made Reid fear the answer. If that wasn't who he was then how was he supposed to know himself anymore than anybody else did. If this mask was truly lying to him, as it was to everybody else, and if it truly was breaking -- would he really want to pick up the broken pieces? Or would he want to seize the opportunity to finally get to know himself -- for who he was supposed to be. What if that person was worst than the person he'd already comitted to?

Tyler was definitely amused, but there was something else there, cleverly hidden concern. Reid tried to lift a hand to craddle his head but another hunter had seized his other arm and all he managed to do was drop his head slightly. He tried to squeeze his eyes shut but that just made his world spin faster, so he quickly popped them back open. _Reid? _Tyler's voice was soft, gentle, calming even if it was only in his head.

Reid focused hard on a spot on the ground, even as the witch slowly approached him. He heard shuffling across the room, and distantly saw Caleb's feet straighten as he was roughly forced to stand. He squinted at the ground, and tried hard to force the world to steady, to stop rotating, to just stop and stand still. Just long enough for him to gather what remained of his bearings. The witch slipped a calloused hand into Reid's grimy hair and jerked his head back sharply. He gasped, his world tilting visciously. He tried to swallow hard, keep the nausea at bay. "Foolish boy. You've just made a very fatal error," the witch hissed, his face dangerously close to Reid's._ It's withdrawl, Reid. You shocked your body when you were cut off from the power. But it's been three days -- and now you're doing just as much damage to your body by Using._

"I didn't mean --"

"Shut up." It was a shout, the first shout from the witch thus far. He was pissed. The true horror in the world is unpredictability. When you can foresee what is bound to happen, you are capable of preparing yourself -- gaining the necessary state of mind, if you will. But Reid had caught the witch off guard because the witch had assumed the cuffs would keep their powers at bay. Either the cuffs weren't strong enough for either of them, or Reid's power was temporarily heightened in his anger. Either way, the witch was caught off guard, and over powered. And that just wasn't gonna cut it. He needed to do something to Reid -- hurt him so severely so that even when the boy does have his power, he'd still cower in fear -- too afraid to do anything, even if it was out of anger. He wanted to paralyze the boy. Not physically, but mentally. And maybe physically too...

Reid shook his head, and then his body convulsed and he doubled over, a sharp burning sensation rocketing through his head as he tore against the hand that held him. The witch quickly stepped away and the hunters immediately released their hold on the blonde as he heaved the contents of his stomach onto the stone floor. It wasn't much -- he hadn't eaten anything in three days, and all they'd been given to drink was a moldy bucket of water once a day to make sure they lived long enough to be burned alive. A quiet wimper escaped his raw throat as he heaved a second time. His legs were shaking but a hunter seized him by his arm before he could sink to his knees. Tyler was quiet in his head, but he knew the boy hadn't left him. He stayed with him, without uttering falsified assurances. All he needed was his pressence. _You okay?_

_**Yeah. You got something? I assume that's why you're...here...**_

_We've got a second covenant. And two hunters. They think it won't take long to crack them. How much longer do you have?_

The witch's eyes were obsidian and the puke on the floor vanished. Reid watched him closely, slowly wiping his mouth with his arm and swallowing hard. The hunter loosened his grasp on him, and he was almost standing free of them. Perhaps it was because he was wavering on his feet. "Better?" The witch asked him brightly. _**Caleb's going to trial.**_

Reid could feel Caleb's intense gaze on him, silently scrutinizing him. He knew his face had drained of all the color that had somehow managed to remain within the past few days. He could feel the thin layer of sweat mixing in with the dirt already lining his face. He felt cold and clammy, and shivered. And yet Caleb watching him still managed to be irritating. "No," he hissed, is voice hard and raw_**. I want you to find out who this son of a bitch is.**_

_I'm making a sketch right now._

_**How? I thought you had to Use to communicate telepathically. I mean...I can feel it -- in my mind. Your power. **__I can multitask, Reid. It's just...kind've...not even hard..._

"I don't think you'll be able to handle trial right now. What with detoxing and all. But don't worry, you won't have to go through all that fun alone. I'll be here," the witch murmured, stepping closer to Reid. He nodded back at a pair of witch hunters who promptly hustled Caleb from the room. "You may go," he murmured, eyeing the two hunters still semi restraining Reid.

"Like we'd leave two witches alone." the man on Reid's right sneered.

Reid saw the witch's eyes flash, but it wasn't with fire, and they didn't turn black. "You. Will. Go. Now." Reid glanced over at the man who had first spoken and could've sworn he saw the wheels in the man's head change, and the confusion that passed over his face before disappearing. The men mechanically released Reid, who wavered on his feet once more, and promptly left. The witch lifted a hand to steady the boy against the cool wall behind him. _**He has no connection to our covenant. But what about the peace?**_

_Hope not. I like being able to trust people outside of the covenant. And Charlie says that each covenant has their own signature -- residue they leave behind when they Use. Each covenant Uses differently. And some witches are powerful enough to see this residue -- like a type of aura. Did you see his eyes, Reid? He wasn't Using when he made them leave. Just like you don't Use when you heal._

_**He said his covenant was dead. You think he's talking about the justice?**_

_I don't know. Do you remember what type of magic the Justice Used?_

_**No. It's been a while. And to be honest -- I wasn't paying much attention the first time around...Tyler?**_

"What are you doing?" Reid's head jerked up, icy blue eyes meeting dark orbs. Dark - but not quite black.

"What?" He croaked. The wall was crumbling, sharp shards digging into his sore back when he shifted beneath the witch's hand.

"You're doing something," the witch announced, staring hard into Reid's eyes. "Tell. Me. What."

Reid scrunched up his face. He wanted to tell him_. No you don't, Reid. It's his power. __**I'm sorry. I need to -- **__No. I won't let you. _"I'm not doing anything," Reid heard himself snap defensively, but he hadn't meant to say that. _**What if there's more than three covenants. More traitors. How are we supposed to fight them when they deliberately blur the lines? **__That's almost poetic, Reid.__** Fuck you**_. "And if I were - I wouldn't tell you. So go fuck yourself." _**Nice way to use proper grammar, Tyler.That's **_real _**convincing.**_

A slow smile distorted the witch's hostile features. "I've been watching you for a long time, Garwin," he murmured, his hot breath pressing hard against Reid's cheek and flushing it red beneath a blackened bruise. Reid turned his head to evade it, but the witch gripped his chin hard between his fingers and forced it back around. "Ever since you were ten." _That's creepy_. "You were an interesting kid. I'm sure that Simms boy is just as complicated and fucked in the head as you are. But with you -- it was always so much easier to see what was going on on the inside just by looking at you. Shame your friends tried not to look at you at all..." Reid tried to shake his head, but the shock of the words still reached his eyes_. You know that's not true, Reid. Emotions are for pussies, remember? __**I never blamed you. Any of you. **__Then why does it still hurt? __**It doesn't **__- I can feel it, Reid. I thought you never lied to me. __**You guys didn't want to see it.**__ We missed a lot when we were kids Reid. We're different now._

"I knew you would be fun to break," the witch went on, staring hard into Reid's cold eyes. "And once Simms gets here -- that's when the real fun will start. Provided that you're still alive." Tyler's voice sounded different when he spoke up again. Guarded. _Your witch has been IDed. His name is Cotton Warren. Descedent of Mary Warren_.

"Who the hell is Mary Warren?" Reid asked outloud, and then closed his mouth quickly in realization. _**Uh oh.**_

"What?" the witch asked him kindly, cocking his head to the side like a confused dog. _She's the one that got John Proctor hanged. Surely you remember who he is. Learn how to talk in your fucking head. __**I have been! It was an accident. **__He was a member of the covenant of justice. A very powerful member. Like somebody that even the leader obeyed. They believe that when his covenant was captured, the hunters saw his power over them and seized it. Guess they were banking on his loyalty -- but with power like his - loyalty only exists in theory and fairy tales. __**And the bible**__. _There was sardonic laugh in his head. _The bible's the worst fairy tale of them all. Because take it all to heart._

"Um..." Reid Garwin liked to think that he was occassionally witty. It was necessary to be considered a smart ass -- a title he held with accumulated pride. But no...right now he was at an utter lost for words. Such a foreign feeling. "Um..."

The witch, recently identified as Cotton, almost smiled but the slight twitch of his lips failed to reach his dark eyes. "I knew you were up to something, Garwin. Say my name."

Reid shook his head. "I don't know --" Cotton punched him and Reid's head rocketed back against the stone wall, several shards of stone breaking off against his skull. He grimaced, dropping his head slightly as he struggled to fold the pain neatly and place it in a box out of sight, out of mind. It didn't work. "Cotton Warren," he mumbled in a pained whisper.

"What else do you know, Garwin?" Cotton growled. The hand he had pressed against Reid's chest, initially to help steady the boy, was pressing hard against his skin, fresh waves of pain rippling out from it. _Don't talk, Reid._

"You were a part of the covenant of justice," Reid answered quietly. _Goddamnit. What the fuck did I just say?_

"Anything else?" Cotton pressed, leaning closer to Reid. "You were powerful. And you welched on your own covenant," Reid hissed. _Damnit Reid. Listen to me. Stop talking right now. __**I can't. **__Then I'll make you. _"You're fucking vermin. That's all that matters." The punched rocketed Reid's head back against the wall but he didn't feel it. He didn't feel much of anything -- not the hunger, or the pain radiating the length of his body, not the forever lingering fear and aggitation. Nothing. He did briefly think before he faded away -- _**Imagine how his covenant felt. That'd be like Caleb turning on us. They must've been so hopeless right before they died, betrayed, knowing what he did to them.**_ And then he was gone and his body crumbled to the ground.


	8. Locked in a glass house

_A/N: Sorry for my absence. I feel kind of listless. But don't lose hope, my little ducklings. I appreciate you reading my writing, it means a lot to me. I need to know if what I'm trying is working. I need to know what you want and what you think. Reviews are very important._

_I tried something pretty bold in this chapter. And I hope I didn't fuck up the story by doing this. I've gotten a great deal of the outline for the next chapter -- which is Reid's reaction -- done already. After that comes the 'rescue'. And after the rescue will be a epilogue chapter of some sort. So from here on out there's maybe four chapters left. So this story is very close to an end. However, along with internet, I no longer have access to a computer, so it'd take a while. I'll post what I can when I can. Sorry._

_--_

_**We all live in a house of fire - no fire department to call - no way out. Just the upstairs window to look out of - while the fire burns the house down - with us trapped, locked in it.**_

_**-- Tennessee Williams.**_

It was an accident.

Tyler liked to think that he would do anything for his covenant, even in death. He knew he'd do more than anything for Reid, his best friend in the whole world. But it was an accident. Did that take away the value of his sacrifice? His mere unintention. Was he any less dead because he hadn't meant to die? Was he not a martyr? Just another casualty of war, somehow less significant than all those who intentionally threw themselves at Death's feet in the delusion of a greater purpose; greater than themselves; than their world and their lives, their entire existence. His sacrifice didn't count, even if it was by his own hand; even if it had been for a greater purpose than himself; for his life, his reason for living; another human in which he could never imagine life without. It didn't count. But he was still dead. No take-backs.

The pent up Power radiating from Reid, even when the boy wasn't Using, even when a stretch of physical space separated them, was too much. It was too Powerful, and Tyler couldn't gauge it. He couldn't stop it before it merged with his own and overwhelmed him. Before a simple act of telepathy turned into a complex act of body snatching. An act he alone would never have the ability to complete, even after he ascended. But Reid's Power was so ripe, so powerful and painfully eager; it was willing to do anything. He felt that Power grab out at him and pull him in. He felt the strength of that Power for the first time in his life. He felt what Reid had to endure everyday of his life. He understood the addiction. And it terrified him.

Even in the absence of Reid Garwin, he could feel the boy's personality and tantalizing Power radiating through his form - this body, this last physical link to the blonde. But there was something missing. That tiresome gift that he couldn't help detesting. It was gone. His mind was quiet and he silently found the ability to acknowledge his own emotions. And the emotions that consumed him so completely were fear, disorientation and anger. And unrelenting need. No...these emotions did not belong to him any more than they ever had. It was still Reid.

Reid had been moved to a different cell in the dungeon. The room was smaller, darker and it smelled like mildew. It was cold and Reid had been stripped of his shirt and his jeans were torn; they were loose and every time he shifted, the uneven concrete pulled at the fabric. His deep blue gaze scoured his new body hesitantly, because the body he saw didn't entirely resemble the body he knew to belong to his best friend. The shrouding dark hid the dark blood that clung to his pale vessel. His body was bruised, and the pale stretch of skin was almost blackened entirely. The cuts were deep in color but blended in seamlessly. The blood and the dirt and the distinct grime of the dungeon had mixed together to create its own distinct color and texture that was unfamiliar to the youngest son. But something darker, deeper caught his eye. It was a mark that he vaguely recognized but couldn't identify. It was a specific mark, almost bland and forgettable in appearance, but life altering and threatening in fable. Tyler knew exactly what it meant. The mark on his hip bone, a bone that stretched against the skin, was a brand that meant one thing; something that transcended language and culture. Ownership. And the skin was irritated, swollen and a deeper purple than his general mass of bruises. And it burned with an intense fire that made Tyler audibly groan. The sort of pain that made you claw at your skin in search of some other spark to take away from that ache. An ache Tyler Simms hadn't ever experienced. An ache he wasn't sure Reid had ever experienced, but suddenly he wanted to know. He wanted to see into every crevice of Reid's mind, Reid's memory. He wanted to know the third son in a way he hadn't ever cared to before. He was tired of closing his eyes, choosing to deliberately blink, every time the son screwed up. Every time the son broke himself and clumsily tried to repair his own damage, yet managing to lose bits and pieces of himself in the process -- pieces that no longer fit into the shattered person Reid was rapidly becoming. Tyler hated himself for looking the other way, even if that was what Reid had wanted -- had told him to do. Tyler wanted to know what he had endured. Because Reid's endurance had shaped the blonde in a way the covenant couldn't understand. It had torn him apart and made him somebody else. He had changed while Tyler had been sleeping and now sometimes Tyler was surprised to realize he didn't recognize the blonde anymore. In place of his best friend was this shell, this crystallized vessel; hard, abrasive, solid and stone cold. Not just changed, but an entirely different person. He wanted to know why.

The bruises merged quickly into one general ache. But there was a familiar feeling that rose above the rest. A feeling that still remained vaguely distant to Tyler Simms. Because he wasn't addicted. And yet he still had the misfortune of being best friends with an addict. He still felt that urge, that wash of desire roll over him every time he stood beside Reid. It was so much more intense now that it was within his own body. It was so much more tempting and sickening and painful. And the mere withdrawal Reid had been going through was enough to make him grimace and writhe in agony. The pain was a dull ache compared to the white hot need.

"Mr. Garwin." Tyler jumped at the voice, a deeper groan escaping him as movement created pains of its own. Midnight blue eyes that didn't belong in the ghostly pale face peered into the sea of blackness. He couldn't see the man but a knowledge within him, one that he knew did not belong to Tyler Simms, identified the voice as Bob Olinger and the complete dread of that realization physically hurt. Tyler fed off of Reid's emotions for this man; the contempt and distaste and absolute lack of respect and those negative emotions helped him bite back the mounting nausea and clear his blurred vision. Bob was close enough for him to see the contours of his skin now. "You look downright miserable."

He wanted to recoil but something inside of him wouldn't let him. Bob's eyes roved over his battered chest without restraint. He extended a hand. The exhaustion and pure depression kept Tyler still as the man touched his face. Bob noticed the flinch but Tyler's eyes had slid closed before he could see the twisted smile of tainted pleasure. "Your friend was found guilty." The voice was just a quiet whisper, buried beneath an ocean of hideous glee. A fat finger dragged itself across an open sore and Tyler hissed, but he kept his eyes closed. Fingers pressed against his collar bone and the sudden pressure forced another hiss of pain from him. He felt broken, and with each touch, he felt himself breaking further. A memory resurfaced behind his closed eyelids and Tyler knew immediately what the man was talking about. Caleb had gone to trial and he had been found guilty. "His form of execution is still undecided. So many to choose from for a boy of his caliber. Drowning, burning, electrocution, stoning, or we can do what they did in the older days and pit him against some other desperate witch. Like yourself."

"Not desperate enough," Tyler croaked. "I'd rather die." He could feel it inside of him. There was a lot of animosity between the two boys, but they were still friends. Reid would defend Caleb (given the life or death situation) in a heart beat. Even if it meant his own death, Reid would never betray Caleb, or the covenant. Nothing could make him do that; not money, power or life. He was a good person, regardless of the persona he projected. The covenant was his family, all he had.

Bob shrugged, but he must have noticed that aspect within Reid as well. "Maybe so," he agreed. "But some aren't as picky as you, Mr. Garwin. Very few witches are as honorable as you'd like to think. It's a nasty race. Powerful, but blind, and greedy. Stumbling around drunkenly like this land is theirs for the taking. This land isn't yours, Garwin. Your people didn't die for it, not like --"

"Didn't they?" Tyler interrupted. His voice was hard, but he wasn't sure where the emotion came from. He didn't take his ancestors to heart, not like this. Yes, the witch hunts were horrible events placed in history, but he held no emotions for them. No more than he did for the holocaust, or the revolutionary war. "It was them first, wasn't it?" He demanded. "In Salem. It was they who built that village. It was they who set up the laws, and the churches and the separate houses. It was they who helped you, when you got sick, or when your crops failed. It was they who helped _your_ people. And what'd you do? How'd you thank them? How's that bible tell you to treat them? You burned down their houses. Hanged and drowned their families. Put them on trial for making you remedies for smallpox and leprosy. You chased them out of that town because they kept you alive when you couldn't manage. Because they didn't need you, not like you needed them. It was they who died -- they who built this land. Ipswich. This is ours. It is you who claim our land as if it's yours. Blessed by some merciful yet murderous God. It isn't blessed. You'll find that out soon."

"Shut up," Bob said. His voice was deathly calm, his face blank. His eyes, however, shown darkly. They reflected everything. His twisted anger and tainted pleasure he got from all of this. The deaths of others. An entire nation of witches...dead. This was his pleasure. His life. "How dare you speak of God as if you can even conceive --"

"I conceive," Tyler interrupted. He'd stopped thinking about the words. They weren't his. It wasn't his message, or his anger. But he spoke them anyway, because they needed to be said. "No less than you. I read your bible. The old and new testament. I understood what it said...did you? I attended your church. Your Sunday school. Watched your preachers. You think I'm ignorant of your God. As if that's the only reason to ignore his _obvious_ existence. It isn't ignorance, Bob. It's knowledge. I possess thought, and thought interferes with blind faith. Because I can think. _Can you, good little zombie, you_?"

Bob waited until Tyler had stopped talking, until he was finished. Tyler hadn't ever attended church. He didn't know that Reid had. He didn't know Reid had read the bible, or that Reid could speak in sentences like he just had. Tyler didn't know Reid was studying other religions -- other than the book of damnation. Why would Reid hide that? Why would Reid bother studying Christianity? What was his gain? His purpose?

When Tyler was sure Reid was done he felt his gaze soften. The blonde had grown recessive, allowing Tyler full control of his body once more. Bob struck out at him, a fat fist smashing into his bony jaw, and Tyler's head whipped back. It rocked against the concrete beneath him and stars bloomed and died behind closed eyelids. A pain blossomed against the back of his head and rapidly spread, accompanied by a persistent throbbing that expanded across his entire head. His face screwed up in a grimace as groan after groan escaped him. Bob's meaty fist buried itself in his dirty hair and held tight, pulling at the bruised flesh beneath the matted hair and creating new strands of pain.

"It's not long now," he purred, shaking Tyler's head casually. He liked the pained expression that seemed permanent. Tyler's lips were thin, smoothed out into a nearly nonexistent line of tension. His teeth gnashed together hard enough to hurt. His eyes squeezed shut against it. His pale, bony hands were closed tightly into fists but it didn't stop the agony.

Bob shook his head again.

"Can you feel it, Garwin?" He didn't wait for an answer. He didn't care. "The impending destruction of the second war. There will be death. Justified, glorious, bloody deaths."

"Yours," Tyler agreed. "Kill me now, Bob. Or I _will _kill you."

Bob laughed off the threat but his fist tightened in Tyler's hair. The boy's grimace quickly bled into a glare. "I don't think so kid. You'll be too bloodied, too bruised to ever do anything against me. You already are."

"Of course I am," Tyler agreed conversationally.

Bob lifted a hand to cup Tyler's greasy cheek. He gave the boy a squeeze and Tyler tried to recoil but Bob's hand in his hair held him firmly in place. "Do it, boy. Your worst. I won't even fight back. Do it and you can walk out. Won't even try to stop you. Go on."

Tyler felt the Power stirring within him, interested in the offer. And then there was Reid within him, also interested in the offer. Each persona eager to accept it. He ground his teeth hard, and squeezed his eyes shut. No. He wasn't going to be tempted. He wasn't going to play into this man's hand. He would resist. Pain blossomed across his chest and he gasped loudly, suddenly breathlessly. "No," he ground out, more so against the Power, than to Bob. "No. Stop it."

"Stop?" Bob asked, a smile stretching his face hideously. "Not yet." His thumb trailed Reid's defined jaw line and across his bottom lip. Tyler's jaw clenched and unclenched uncertainly.

Bob shrugged indifferently. "Fine," he amended in a voice that could pass as kind, maybe even gentle. His thumb pulled at Tyler's lip and Tyler let him. "There is certain information I'd like to extract from you. If you are corporative, I'll set you up in a nice, almost humane room; above ground. Maybe even with heating. And food." He smiled a goofy smile that made Tyler frown. That single word forced his mind to food, and his stomach growled violently. He was a rich boy -- he and Reid, neither of them had ever had to go hungry before. "I bet you're starving, huh, kid? It's been what; three, four days? If you tell us what we want to know, we'll clean you up a bit, make you more comfortable."

Food did sound good. The dirt and cold were bound to affect his body. It was inevitable -- with so many open sores. And without food and nutrition, his body was bound to be too weak to fight off the infections. "I'm not --"

A hand pressed against Tyler's mouth and he fell silent immediately. The man's hand was stark white and smelt of cleaning solvent. The smell was intoxicating and made him light headed, and the pressure against his skin hurt. "There is a myth about your kind," Bob said. "Apparently it isn't so much of a myth after all. I want to know what your gift is." He removed his hand but Tyler remained silent. "I want to know if you know the origins of your gift. Why now? Why your generation? Why not the first generation?"

_It was too late for the first generation. They had already ascended._ Tyler wanted to move away, to recoil and fold in on him self but the exhaustion of his physical body was quickly seeping into his mind. All he really wanted to do was curl into a ball and fall asleep. But he wouldn't be able to do that, not with this gnawing need brewing something furious inside of him or this hunter watching him with that look that made him ill. A look that had the power to make even Reid feel dirty.

"Why?" Tyler rasped. "What's my gift got to do with anything? It's just another Satan admitted ability. Why am I still alive? Why does it matter?"

Bob's smile seemed to inflate beyond reasonable size. "I was afforded one hour with the prisoner of my choice, because I've completed my civic duties. And out of all of them, you're the one I want to traumatize. But it doesn't have to be that way. All you have to do is tell me what your gift --"

"Wait," Tyler cut in and Bob's voice died. The glare that passed over his features would have been comical to Reid and Tyler did feel like laughing but he managed to suppress that particular urge. "How many witches have you caught?"

"Excuse me?" Bob growled. His voice almost sounded nice due to the overriding confusion.

"You said 'all of them'," Tyler said. "That entails more than just Caleb. How many other witches have you caught?" If three covenants existed, in America alone, then how many other witches could there be? What percentage of humanity were actually witches? How many students, strangers or random adults had Tyler encountered who were really witches? How many humans lived beneath a fake facade just because society wasn't ready for who they really are, much like Tyler? How many lives had been ruined in the name of God?

Bob understood exactly where he had slipped up and he frowned. It was a slip up that Reid probably wouldn't have caught, but Bob didn't know Reid well enough to be sure of that. He only knew who Reid was supposed to be. And Reid definitely hadn't ever been who he was supposed to be. "Enough to impact their society." _Enough to severely change them, as a whole. One integral being._

Tyler didn't know how many witches existed. That bit of information didn't tell him anything. But it did tell him that they had caught multiple witches. More than one, more than a couple or a few. _Enough_. And he had called their subculture a society. Societies are tight knit groups of individuals working together to live beneath the same set of rules. Tyler knew there were rules. Elders. Laws that he had to abide by. He should have known that meant there were more people than just his covenant. These laws were invented because there were _enough _witches. Enough often meant a lot. But did it mean a lot this time?

"But these witches you've caught," Tyler pressed. The more he talked the easier it got. The pain seeped away the more he focused. "They're from my generation, aren't they?" His voice still sounded like he had accidentally gurgled bleach. "You know, don't you? You know that this Power isn't all we've got, and that's why you're targeting us. Because this all scares you. Because you can't control it. Because we can't always control it so --"

"Shut up." Bob's voice was slick, smooth, yet oddly intimidating and Tyler's voice died on cue. "You seem different, Garwin. More intuitive. Why?"

"I've been eating my frosted flakes," Tyler answered briskly. He wasn't sure where the sarcasm came from but he liked the sound of it. It was Reid's sarcasm, and it was definitely in Reid's voice, but there was a twinge of something else caught in the simple sentence. It was quirk, that's what Tyler decided. And Reid couldn't possess quirk...He was witty, but not quirky.

But Tyler's brain, or Reid's for that matter, was fired up suddenly. It was working over time and Tyler couldn't slow it down to give himself a minute to think slowly, thoroughly. It was all so overwhelming, so distorted and scattered. He knew the boy was always hyper, distracted. He knew that Reid could jump from subject to subject, but he hadn't ever considered how quickly Reid could process things. He hadn't ever dwelled on the fact that Reid was the first to come to terms with anything, or the fact that he was rarely surprised, rarely offended, rarely baffled or confused. He didn't know how fast Reid's brain actually worked because the blonde had always dumbed himself down. He wanted to fit into society...Tyler hadn't ever noticed how necessary that attribute was. Reid was always supposed to be the screw up, the slacker, the class clown. Tyler knew him better than that. He knew Reid wasn't stupid. He just didn't know he was smart. Even though Reid always had an answer at the ready when Tyler asked him questions about their homework. Reid always had a way of explaining things, a peak into his mind, so to speak. Tyler realized that he liked that -- how Reid explained things to him. Brisk, but without that tone -- as if Tyler should've known it all along. He hadn't ever noticed how smart Reid was, even though the blonde hadn't ever hid it -- not from him. He just didn't flaunt it. His intelligence seemed to be the only thing in which the blonde didn't flaunt.

"You don't know any of our gifts, do you?" He pressed instead, voicing the question floating around in Reid's head. "That's why you haven't killed anybody yet, that's why you left Charlie Parry alone at the end of the last war. Because somebody realized what was happening." _But how? We were only thirteen_. "But how? Who gave us away? It had to be somebody older than those in my covenant. It was Cotton Warren, wasn't it?" The name had surfaced in his head and he knew the idea wasn't his. "You were told that you'd be able to use us. You selfish assholes."

Bob's face had slowly shifted from irritated to surprised but he covered the weak emotion fairly quickly. Not before Reid's eyes processed the emotion for what it was. Bob had fucked up. That's why the guards were strong but silent, because somebody somewhere, probably Cotton Warren, wanted the witches to remain shrouded in secrecy. He wanted them to remain ignorant. Bob had talked too much and he knew it. But why all the conspiracies? Cotton was a witch -- why would all these renowned hunters bow to him and give him the power he wanted? Tyler knew he wasn't the top dog, but if he wasn't then who was? And why would some leader just stand aside while a witch fulfilled his own plans? _What the fuck is going on?_ "So, tell me," he said. "What is your gift."

"If I tell you that, I sign my own death certificate, profitable or not," Tyler said. The pain was growing, coupled with the insistent need. He bit back the pain but the need was too consuming. He grimaced and Bob's laughter broke through the suffocating fog. All Reid had to do was close his eyes and focus on that pain...why hadn't he? Why hadn't he healed himself when he could? Tyler didn't have to strain himself to realize that he couldn't do what Reid had accomplished at the age of thirteen. He knew he couldn't heal himself. He knew what the gift felt like, always present, always there, but that space his own gift had wedged itself into was now vacant. He was no longer empathic, but he definitely wasn't a healer. Yet. Now he just hoped his own gift remained dormant for Reid just as Reid's gift had for him.

"Would you like me to bring Mr. Warren back?" Bob offered. Cotton Warren had just knocked Reid unconscious. His face was bruised and his head was throbbing because of this Cotton Warren. But they both understood exactly why Bob was so smug. Cotton was their special weapon. He was a witch, a traitor, sure. But he was from their generation, seemingly the oldest. He had a gift of his own. Persuasion. What he wanted to know you couldn't keep from him -- provided that you knew the answer. Of course Tyler knew what Reid's gift was. But Tyler couldn't help wondering, when Cotton asked him that question, would he say healing or empathy? Was it the body or the mind that fell prey to Cotton's gift? Would he truly be asking Tyler the questions or would he ask Reid?

"I'm not telling you anything," Tyler said. He only hoped that if Cotton were to tear the answers from him, he tore them from Reid. Because Reid was truly in the dark about a lot of things that were best left unsaid. "I don't know anything."

"You've been in contact with your covenant," Bob reminded him, his voice turning hard. "You know more than you should. I just want to know what you know."

"Sucks for you," Tyler said.

Tyler didn't see the punch coming and the impact jerked his head back, slamming his skull into the ground. He yelped as the movement jarred his pained body. His teeth gnashed and he jerked quickly when he realized that he'd just bit his tongue. The pain was sluggish and almost dull, but it added to the mount of pain ebbing away at his self-restraint. He threw his head away from Bob and spat out a mouthful of blood. "What is your gift?

"I can disappear," Tyler whispered seriously. Reid's generally white teeth gleamed red and Bob smiled at the image. "Teleportation, I believe the 'experts' call it."

"Smartass." The voice was grim and Tyler almost jumped at the addition. Except Reid wouldn't let him. Craning his neck, he noticed the dark figure that hid in the farthest corner of the dungeon. He recognized the man, even though he couldn't see his face, even though he'd never been in the same room as this man before. It was Cotton Warren. But the man wasn't glaring at Tyler as he had been at Reid earlier. He was staring at him with an odd sort of expression that made Tyler nervous. "What is your gift?" Cotton asked. He didn't move closer yet his ominous figure still seemed unbearably overwhelming. His voice carried across the room, still maintaining a whisper.

Tyler was quiet for a moment as the need to answer consumed him. He bit down hard on his lip in an attempt to remain silent, but all he succeeded at was filling his mouth once more with the familiar metallic taste. "Healing." He nearly sighed at the answer.

Cotton's face lit up in a smug smirk that in turn lit a fire within Tyler and forced a darker glare from him. "What is the other witch's gift?"

Tyler racked his own brain for Caleb's gift but it wasn't there. He remembered something that June had told him the day before but the memory was fuzzy and faint. It wasn't his memory anymore and the mere act of trying to retrieve it was giving him a headache. She had told him that Marshal's gift had remained dormant, and that was why the boy was always pissy. Because his family, people younger and less leaderishly (the word she had coined) were gaining these powerful gifts that he couldn't quite grasp. Nobody knew what his gift was, but there was still pressure on him. He was their leader, it had to be a good gift. Strong. But she had said something else. She had mentioned that it always seemed like the leaders were the last to evolve, to grow and become useful. She had said they didn't adapt well. But Marshal was her only leader, what other leaders was she alluding to? Could it be Pogue, was he the remaining leader, aside from Marshal? Or had she meant Caleb, a boy she hadn't seen since she was twelve?

"I don't know," he heard himself answer, his voice hollow and defeated. He had answered Cotton, but he knew he had also answered his own inner musings. There was too much he didn't know and it was really starting to get to him. He would've stopped at that if he could. It wasn't just Reid who wanted to stop at that, but also Tyler. Divulging more truth than necessary had never been a wise thing, a fact each boy had learned at an early age. "Caleb's gift hasn't shown itself yet."

"He's the leader," Cotton said, his voice faint on Tyler's ears, perhaps even fainter on Bob's even if the hunter was a few inches closer to the traitor. Reid had always had sensitive ears, even though he hid the attribute well. He'd tell Tyler sometimes to quit yelling, or to relax; and sometimes when Tyler repeated his words to him -- Reid actually listened. Could that be gratitude? Only Tyler saw him wince sometimes when Caleb yelled at him.

Caleb was the leader, and that's why Tyler doubted his own knowledge of the boy. When they were younger, Caleb used to divulge a great deal more of himself. He used to get excited and obsess. When he first got his Power, it was Pogue, and Tyler and Reid that he spoke to -- that he explained how it all felt. How amazing it all was. They all knew he was bound to be the leader. They all saw that attribute hidden within him before he, himself, did. But as they grew older, and the Power quickly turned into a curse, he stopped talking about it. Not just the Power, but himself. And his obsessions, even though they all knew he still had them. He stopped showing his excitement and expressing his feelings. His problems. Only when it concerned the covenant, did he speak of his Power. How he felt Reid using, even though Pogue couldn't. Even though Tyler shouldn't -- being the youngest, and least developed. If Caleb were to receive his gift, Tyler wouldn't be surprised if he just didn't tell them about it. Because that was Caleb. Not secretive, just silent. The idea pissed Tyler off, even as he realized that's exactly what he had done. He had remained silent about his gift, just as Caleb would. Keeping secrets was just a step down from lying, and after lying came deception and along that road lay betrayal.

June had told Tyler that within each group, each organization -- each chain, lay a weak link. A crack in the system that everybody just manages to overlook, _because they don't want to see it. They want to believe their friends, their families are honest, loyal, good people. Dependable and responsible. Strong. But with a group of people, somebody has to be weak. The weakest. Somebody has to possess the ability to crack under pressure, and crumble beneath scrutiny. A broken leg that just needed to be lent on to collapse. Perhaps strong on the surface, in appearance, but a turmoil of fear and animosity lay within. _She had told him that it was his responsibility, all of their responsibility to not be that weak link. To remain strong, _no matter what. _Caleb wasn't that weak link -- even if his silence placed him on the road to betrayal. He wasn't Cotton Warren. But because Caleb wasn't the weak link, did that mean Tyler was? Not now, but maybe somewhere down the line. Did that mean that Tyler was already cracking, and would soon break beneath all this mounting despair and fear? Would he stumble about, recklessly seek an out, regardless of the cost? Would he kill them all just to live? He hoped not. He _hoped _not. And he couldn't imagine a time in which his own life would be that important. He couldn't imagine a life without the covenant. He couldn't imagine a reason to live if living was to be without them. He hoped this was how it would stay. Them above himself -- because only in sacrifice was betrayal obsolete.

Cotton was staring at Bob. Tyler didn't need his own gift to read Cotton like a book; the witch gave off too much to be a professional. He was inexperienced, and that's how Tyler knew he wasn't leading this hunt. He played captain, but that title was reserved for somebody else. He was still a kid, barely ascended, scared and confused even though he tried to hide it. Tyler could see, merely based on Cotton's composure and voice toward Bob, that he viewed him as extra baggage. He viewed all the hunters as extra bags of waste. He still held hostility, the hostility born into his genetic makeup, toward these hunters. He was disrespectful and viewed himself as their superior. But they kept him there, alive and healthy, because he was more powerful than them. They _needed _him and he knew it. "What other gifts have presented themselves?"

Tyler shook his head; grimy hair fell across his eyes. Annoyed, he dragged a hand across his forehead and swiped the hair back. Gifts, faint now to Reid's mind, flashed before his eyes but he shoved them away. He knew June's gift but he hadn't ever seen her use it. She had told him that she was a shape shifter. And he knew she could mimic voices to perfection. But she didn't take these gifts seriously because she hadn't needed them. Yet. She almost seemed morose about them. He'd seen Jacob use his gift. The boy clung to the gift and embraced it in a rare way within the covenant. Everybody walked on eggshells with their Power, but not Jacob. Jacob was almost animalistic about it. June had called him a technopath. Technology was his, but he was a mechanic. He couldn't control his gift as well as Stryker wanted him to, and that seemed to annoy Jacob but he hid his irritation well.

"I don't know," he answered, even as he attempted to ignore the fact that he did know. Reid didn't know Tyler's gift. He didn't know anybody else's gift. Only his own. Tyler was glad, but he still felt guilty about his deception. Reid had told him he didn't lie to him. Not to Tyler. Ever. He had said. He'd sounded hurt when he realized what Tyler had been keeping from -- his situation at home. His father. (All of that is in the side story, Don't Care) Even after Reid had revealed his own problems to Tyler. He had been hurt, even though the two weren't close at the time. Reid had trusted him. Reid still trusted him. But Tyler couldn't ever unfurl himself -- he couldn't completely stand erect, and let his guard crumble. He needed to do this on his own. He needed to master his empathy. He didn't know how he would do that without completely shutting down all emotional flow to his brain. But he was going to do it. He just needed to do that on his own. To be strong and self reliant. He needed it.

Cotton studied Tyler closely for a minute. "He is telling the truth," he told Bob. "I cannot tell you the gifts of his covenant. But Oz and Stryker are nursing their gifts quite nicely. They're profitable and we need to take them out. They might actually know something. Intuitive little brats."

"Take them out," Tyler repeated. He heard the horror but knew it didn't show on his face.

"What other gifts?" Bob asked, his voice almost drowning out Tyler's. He sounded eager and Tyler couldn't see why. These gifts weren't his. They couldn't ever be his, because he was human. His body was weaker - it wouldn't last a day with this power embodied in it. "This Oz and Stryker...?"

"Technopathy and mimicry," Cotton answered promptly. "But they're just children, they've barely got a handle on the Power as it is. How could they know their gifts enough to do anything substantially dangerous with them? Jacob's only had his for a year. Persistent little boy, but not exactly quick." Cotton was from a separate covenant and Jacob and June were almost secretive about their gifts. He didn't know the extent of their power; but he shouldn't have known their power at all.

"Take them out?" Tyler repeated, louder this time when a pause followed Cotton's statement. "What --"

"Capture them," Cotton assured him, his voice almost kind. Tyler's face visibly relaxed; he almost sighed but stopped himself. "Your gifts...they're all so much more profitable than I ever imagined...than ever depicted by history...they're all so..."

"For you," Tyler gasped, recoiling sharply. He didn't feel the pain this time. The need was too high, too furious and too vivid to allow him to feel much of anything else. It was consuming him and he couldn't stop it anymore. He'd made it too angry, and in its blind fury, it was striking out at him, thrashing widely within its confines. He wasn't built for this, wasn't ready for this, even as Reid's body automatically tried to gage the rising tide. It was a flood and he didn't have a boat this time. "Our gifts are yours," he continued, forcing himself back and away, unsteadily to his feet. His body shook with the effort, but fury kept him standing. Cotton followed him, moving forward into the room. "And then...and then what? You'll just kill us? ...they're the fucking enemy." He threw a fist toward Bob, the painful strain of the sudden movement absent. "What the fuck is wrong with you?" A sudden change in lighting that he failed to notice as his eyes turned obsidian. Wind that shouldn't have reached the windowless dungeon lifted his matted hair away from his face and gave him a more sinister appearance. He didn't notice it. He felt warm suddenly as a heated fire ignited within him and fueled his fury. "What..."

Cotton remained immobile as Bob stumbled to his feet. Why hadn't he had the foresight to bring a weapon? All he had was a stun gun but what if one stun wasn't enough? That Reid Garwin looked downright pissed. More dangerous, more angry than he had been the night they caught him. But he was weak and his body couldn't handle the boiling Power curling around inside of him. His breathing was harsh, coming in short, choppy pants. Bob's hands quickly enclosed around the stun gun and his arms locked as he took aim. Cotton hadn't moved, hadn't responded to anything, even as flecks and stones tore themselves free from the walls encaging them. The boy had the ability to bring the whole damn house down on them. And then what? That demon child may be able to survive wreckage on that kind of scale, but Bob sure as hell couldn't. He was blessed to be human.

He shot the gun without making a conscious decision to do so and Tyler jerked back with the impact of the stun. A disoriented bolt of energy was torn from his body and darted across the room, deliberately striking out at Bob. The hunter crashed to the ground. A pool of dark blood quickly gathered but Tyler knew he wasn't fatally hurt. He would live because Reid couldn't kill. Not yet, he wasn't that far gone. Cotton remained unaffected, staring blankly at the blonde. But the electricity of the stun gun managed to cut through the thick, suffocating fog of Power and strike a cord within Tyler. He cried out in pain as his body involuntarily convulsed and collapsed. But the room was still heavy with his magic, his eyes were still black and he was still writhing in pain as the Power controlled him completely. New waves of anguish crashed over him with each rebellious bolt of energy torn from him. He couldn't contain it, couldn't shove it back down. He couldn't stop it, even as it violently tore itself from him, striking out blindly at the offending occupants of the room. His screams of pain were drowned out by the shouts of others and the deafening screech of his Power, that only he and Cotton could hear. Only Cotton knew how terrified the Power was. How angry it was; how it loathed being trapped within such a meek body. He knew it would rebel, every time...until this body, this vessel, this shell, was his and his alone. It would rebel until it had obliterated Reid Garwin. Until it became its own being, alone and free.

The room was filling up with eager hunters, and those that his Power didn't manage to knock out or toss across the room shot their own stun guns at him. His body convulsed with electricity but it had no effect on the Power. The power was detached, acting completely on its own accord. Cotton strode forward, closer, seemingly at ease as the house above him shook uncertainly. He knelt beside the writhing boy and grasped his upper arms hard enough to ease the convulsing and lift his torso from the ground, if only barely. Tyler still grunted and hissed as electricity shook his body but the sharp pain had dissipated, merging with a general dull ache and his screams began to slowly die down. His throat was raw, his eyes screwed shut, thin trails of blood flowed freely from his nose; red mingled with the purple of his face and nearly turned it black. He was so close to black. His hands clenched at Cotton tight enough to turn his knuckles white and his fingers red. He didn't see Cotton's eyes; he didn't know his eyes mirrored his own. He didn't feel the older witch's power washing over him, encaging him, trying and failing to control him.

"Stop."

The word was so simple, so common, easily ignore. But the desire to obey wedged itself into Tyler's head and ate away at his fleeting self-control. It ate away at the rising desire and the lack of restrain and slowly, very slowly, the energy crushing the room surrounding them began to die away before disappearing altogether. The hunters were relinquished, unceremoniously falling to the stone floor with echoing thuds. It all began to recede, until Tyler's heavy gasps filled the destroyed dungeon, his fists still gripped at Cotton's shirt.

"Open your eyes."

Tyler obeyed immediately, without hesitation or the need to refuse. He saw the odd expression written across Cotton's face but he couldn't read it. He couldn't process it. And he was too tired to care about it. His eyelids drooped and he couldn't acknowledge the sharp change in Cotton's expression. Not until Cotton spoke again did he notice how close the witch was to him. "You reek of Power, Garwin. Thought the Covenant of Silence was supposed to have massive restraint."

"That's the covenant of Peace." It was a minor slip that his fuzzy mind couldn't stop. Reid wasn't supposed to know of that particular covenant and Cotton picked up on the realization that stumbled across Tyler's face. He could have played it off but he hesitated and blew it.

Cotton shook his head. "Your eyes are still black, Garwin," he whispered, but Reid's name sounded weird in his mouth now. "I can't control your Power. It's too developed. Too independent to ever be controlled again. I can't make it stop. You're supposed to know how to do that."

"I do," Tyler insisted, pulling weakly away from Cotton, but the witch clung to him tightly, staring -- glaring into his blackened eyes. It took Tyler an entire minute to realize that Cotton's eyes were still black. "I do sometimes," he amended slowly, unsure of why he had to add that. His voice sounded hoarse. He hurt everywhere...he felt broken. Worst than before, even though the need still consumed him so completely; even though the power bit away at him, creating a burning pain of its own. It was need upon pain upon need upon exhaustion upon need and he felt like going insane. He felt lost, and tired, and fed up. He just wanted to end it all.

"I knew it," Cotton assured him quietly. His voice was so quiet that the hunters surrounding them, the same ones who were picking themselves out of the rubble that was the remaining dungeon, couldn't hear him. "You have a different aura," he murmured, pulling Tyler close so that he was nearly sitting. "I felt your conflicting emotions too," he added. "When I asked you questions, you felt almost confused. I can feel that you were telling the truth, but it was a double edged blade. Like you were hiding something from me but that was impossible unless you weren't really Garwin. My gift acknowledges people at face value -- who they're _supposed _to be. But what's locked inside of your mind isn't what's locked inside of Garwin's brain. It was clever. That's a dangerous game. The longer you remain in this body, the more you lose yourself. The more you become him. He wouldn't have resisted that Power nearly as much as you did and next time it'll be even less. Until you break down and succumb to his addiction. When you succumb that's when you fracture yourself. Smash yourself beyond repair. Foolish boy."

The fear was rising but fatigue and need acting as one managed to beat it back down. "Get off me," He rasped out, struggling feebly against Cotton's chest.

Cotton frowned and shoved Tyler away. The boy gasped as his back hit the ground. "I don't know how you did it. That kind of power is extremely ancient, extremely difficult to perform. But that doesn't matter." Tyler's eyes darted past Cotton to Bob, who was approaching them slowly, nursing a broken hand. He held his hand against his chest, but Tyler wasn't sure how he knew it was broken. Something inside of him had assumed it was broken. And then upon gazing, he saw the intricate bones within Bob's damaged hand. He saw the break and he had an urge to fix it. A gash in his forehead shined bright against his pale skin, and a current of blood had turned the right side of his face and neck red. His mouth was bloody and his breathing came with a wheeze and wince. Only Tyler knew that Bob's rib was cracked. "You picked a poor body to inhabit."

"What?" Bob asked. "What does that mean?"

Cotton's eyes narrowed as he threw a nasty look over his shoulder at Bob. "This isn't Reid Garwin."

"How?" Bob demanded, seething. Tyler was too tired to acknowledge the fear that was closing his throat and making him gasp. He looked dazed. He felt dazed. And black dots were feeding away at the edges of his vision. He tried to blink them away but they were in his head. "How is that possible? How do you know that? How --"

"Shut up." Cotton's voice was quiet, firm and cold. It was the most evident Cotton had ever been. He was the teacher and Bob was the slow schoolboy. "I placed a spell on Garwin, so to speak. I placed a worm inside of him. Not his body, not his brain, but inside of his conscious being. It was placed on Garwin alone. It disrupts his mental functions, so when he tries to Use, the headache he receives will be enough to knock him out. Does this boy look unconscious?" Cotton threw a fist toward Tyler but the boy didn't even flinch away. His eyelids were drooping and he couldn't see anything anymore. He certainly did look unconscious, but Bob didn't dare acknowledge that. The darkness was reaching out to Tyler, pulling on him, and he couldn't resist it anymore. It was just so tempting. No need, no pain, no hunger, no fear or worry. It was just so tempting. So profitable.

"Where the fuck is Garwin?" Bob demanded, kicking Tyler in the chest. The boy sucked air in between clenched teeth and tried to recoil but his body wouldn't obey, even as pain blossomed against his chest and slowly began to devour him. Even as his brain began to acknowledge every injury he possessed. "What the fuck did you do to him?"

Tyler cracked open an eye. The eye was a deep blue, softer, warmer than Reid's had ever been. Bob's figure was just a blur. "I saved him," he croaked, trying to cover the throbbing pain with bound hands.

"I had plans for that boy," Bob spat, kicking out again. His boot caught Tyler in the hip and then again in the soft flesh of his side. The boy jerked back sharply, his gasp twisting into a pained yelp. "You fucked it all up." Another kick caught Tyler in the chin and his head snapped back against the stone floor beneath him. A fresh wave of white stars bloomed and died in front of his eyes. His eyelids slipped closed. He tasted blood but it was only when the blood began to seep out of the corners of his mouth that he realized he'd bit his tongue again.

"That's enough." It was Cotton's voice, and it was fuzzy and distant. Perhaps he misheard the witch, because certainly it wasn't the witch telling the hunter when enough was enough. Words were mixed but they were too low and too quick for Tyler's fading cognitive functions to catch, not even the subject or tone of the argument. He was too busy surrendering. Giving in. Letting the darkness finally embrace him, and embracing the darkness in return. He was letting go.

--

_Sometime in our remote history, two sub human groups coexisted. The Neanderthal and the Kromags -- or modern man. Modern humans are known to not have a single drop of Neanderthal blood in them, but perhaps once, in their past, they had. Perhaps Neanderthal and Kromags could mate and thus reproduce -- just as the donkey and horse. Perhaps each species had a different number of chromosomes -- making their offspring infertile. But what if that wasn't the case? What if they could reproduce -- and what if their offspring were healthy, and could in turn reproduce further? As history progressed and they were forced to move on and adapt, what if these offspring, these anomalies, blended seamlessly into society? Until a misconception, one mistake -- one blemish in all human history -- forced them out into the open. They were hunted and tortured and burned because they were not human. What if they were witches? Inheriting the hidden gifts of their ancestors - gifts their ancestors had no knowledge of -- and inheriting the outward appearance of their other ancestors -- modern man. Us. Living in the light, but carrying their darkness with them._

_-- What if some of them had more Neanderthal DNA than others -- resulting in different, hidden gifts. Gifts that tapped into a special Power that didn't tax them. Didn't exhaust them or cost them. These gifts could be located in their genes -- maybe even mutations, copied over and over again as the generations progressed -- mere accident. Some generations ended up with matching genes and the gift -- some didn't. Within obscurity is legend. Only those you cannot see are those that you choose to idolize and worship. If God lived in the garage next door to you, would he possess the same lure, the same power and grace and beauty that you perceived him to have before you'd ever met him? Is the imagination bigger than actual fact? If you knew God, and lived with him and spoke to him -- would the legend continue to live? Or would it die when you realized he wasn't unique? He was one of many. Hundreds, or thousands, or as few as twenty. Five. One generation._

_Only those you can't see, do you long for. These powers -- special gifts, could exist in every generation, but somebody documented them -- wrote them down. And as they appeared more obscure, perhaps they slowly morphed into something else. A legend. And then more obscure as they failed to appear. A myth._

_OR._

_Is this nature's defense? The Power could've been enough. In the beginning. But as hunters multiplied and grew smarter, faster, stronger, and as witches soon saw profit in deception -- perhaps nature realized that witches needed something else. An extra kick. Perhaps witches were forced to adapt -- just as the Australopithecus was upon the arrival of the ice age (of course they failed to adapt and starved to death...) As a response, they developed a gift that tapped into their Power without expending it. Strong and growing. And unique. Profitable and singular. Something they alone possessed. Perhaps one generation possessed it because they needed it. Perhaps it didn't exist in their genes, or their blood. But their Power. Bestowed by the elders, or by nature, or by somebody that wanted them to progress. Or by themselves in their desperation to live._

_A/N: The first part -- about Neanderthals and modern man mating, I got from watching a television program about Neanderthals and their destruction at the hands of modern man. The second part -- about the origins of the gift, a gift I created, I got while typing out the first part. I'm not saying this is true or that this is what I think happened -- it's just what I thought about. A look into my head, if you well. If its even worth it. I don't know. I don't know if this is good. If this is what people want -- because unless people want this writing, of mine, than it isn't good enough. It's the audience that matters, not the writing._

_But this gift is going to be something that remains a mystery. I will not explain it's origins because the sons won't learn the origins. They won't ever know why they received it, and those before them didn't. It will remain a mystery to them, as it will to you. And me. But the two points of view above are what I would have guessed -- if I were reading this. I'm a scientific person -- so the aspect of this power being in their blood and their biological makeup -- or them accessing aspects of their brain that we cannot -- appeals to me in particular, but I won't force it upon you. It could be spiritual, or religious -- whatever you want to imagine. I envisioned them learning about the book of damnation in some sort of Sunday school sort of way. Like it was a family religion. I haven't seen the power specifically explained in any other fic either, so I'm sorry to admit that you won't get that here. I have to leave some things up to the imagination._

_PS -- I have just read the strange case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, and I did realize that my portrayal of Reid and his Power resembles the pair quite a bit. It was unintentional but unavoidable. Reid is seen as the bad boy. If there were evil -- it would be him. I wanted to show that all people, all humans are evil. We each possess it and that's what places us all on a leveled playing field. But as in Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde -- with time, that evil inside of us tends to grow. If you give it freedom, perhaps you come to yearn for it. Freedom that your conscience won't let you have. Reid's Power is that Mr. Hyde. At a young age Reid let it out of its cage, and the freedom -- the sheer carelessness and lack of fear -- was overwhelming. He liked it. The more he gave into his own Mr. Hyde, the more it grew; the more he needed it. The stronger it got. Until one day it was stronger than Reid. Until one day he learned he couldn't control it. He couldn't resist it. Not all the time. This is my explanation for his addiction. Now mind you -- I did mention that addiction was common in his family -- his father had succumbed to addiction (but he was fighting it) even before the first war started. But to me his father didn't sound particularly evil. I know I sound terrible -- because his father did hit him and instill all these confusing conflicting emotions within him. But he did a lot of good too. He did help the covenant of peace -- and it was he who talked his covenant into it (without revealing their locations first). He possessed that same loyalty that Reid has, even with the knowledge of how his covenant viewed him. (My vision of Reid (and his father) kind of reminds me of Spike on Buffy. How he does so much for her but she fails to see it all...until he's literally dying for her, and her world. How adorable was that scene where he came back to her house to find out that the slayers-to-be and her 'best friends' had mutinied and kicked her out (of her own house. Wtf). He went to bat for her, and I believe that's how Reid would react should he need to.)_

_I want to see what will happen when you place Tyler (admittedly a better person at heart than Reid) so close to Mr. Hyde. Do you think Tyler will be tainted? Or will Mr. Hyde be the one tainted? When it comes to showing your true colors, they never appear in black and white (I stole that from a Robin Hood BBC promo 3). So I changed their bodies...and I want you to know that when you do that (according to me...I'm not exactly an expert here...) their bodies remain unchanged. Their brains and their memories remain intact. Because I don't believe in souls -- I can't say their souls switch bodies. So instead -- it's their conscious state of being. Tyler is who he's always been -- but he's trapped within Reid's body, and Reid's body's the same as it has always been. His mind, his brain, processes in the same way it's always done. And as Tyler remains in Reid's body, he finds himself giving in to a lot of attributes he hadn't ever possessed before. Something inside of him refuses to let him give into the suffocating pain and hopelessness and he proves to be braver and colder than he might have been on his own. Sure Tyler wouldn't have ever betrayed his covenant -- but he would've denied the hunters in a different way -- his own way, not Reid's. And then there's an aspect of Tyler still there. Tyler still listens for things that Reid may have missed, even though I believe Reid's really quite intelligent. He just doesn't care for it -- like Tyler does. Reid doesn't particularly need to fill in all the blanks. He doesn't need all the answers and he doesn't need to understand everything. Tyler (much like Caleb) relies on his intelligence and he needs the answers, he needs to know why. He listens and searches for those hidden tells that may give away hints. And coupled with Reid's hidden traits -- his good hearing, and his quick mind and his ability to think outside of the box and predict human desires and impulses -- Tyler connects the dots maybe a bit faster than he would have if he were alone in this._

_That's my analysis on Reid. The next chapter is going to be Reid in Tyler's body -- and like this chapter, there will be a great deal of Tyler realizations. Reid will learn a great deal more about his friend. And if you want -- I can post a Tyler analysis too. After the next chapter I will focus on Caleb and his situation, and how the leader's holding in there. After that comes the rescue attempts and the conclusion. And don't worry -- Pogue will also be prominent in the next chapter. You will get to see the progression of the team on the outside -- and what they've been doing this whole time. There will be a link that's been formed -- between Pogue and Tyler and this other Covenant. Reid being Reid will be uncomfortable with that link. But(!) you'll get to see how Reid reacts to Tyler's inner being. Reid will be nicer, against his well, and contemplative. Major character development. Without his own memories Reid will be forced back to the basics -- who he was and who he wants to be. Maybe now he'll have the ability to fulfill those dormant desires. Or maybe he won't. I haven't decided yet. :-)_


	9. I'm not the one to blame

_A/N: __This chapter is pain all over. I would like to explain one thing -- which is rare. I usually let people assume and take away what they want from each chapter. But in the last chapter -- two characters switched bodies. And Tyler's pain was relatively small, confined to the pain already trapped within Reid's body, from his beatings and his withdrawal and going days without food and water and showering and sunshine and exercise and so on. This chapter leaves Reid in a great deal more pain than Tyler was to begin with. Because Tyler is an empath. I was trying to hint at that, I hope everybody got it. He's an empath and he has his power under control. I don't know why, maybe Tyler's mind is stronger, maybe his power is more internal, but Reid can feel it all immediately; even though Tyler can't heal. And half of his pain is that sudden empathy. The other half is how abruptly Tyler forced the change. Yes, it was Reid's power feeding the change, but it was Tyler's intent. And Reid was __**Forced **_out of his body and that hurts (…or so I assume). That's why he's in a great deal more pain. It isn't just because I like seeing him hurt….

The pain may seem a lot more graphic (like four pages more graphic) because…I'm nin pain. And I notice a lot more when I'm in pain…

PS - this will give away a bit of the story **SO SKIP AHEAD NOW IF YOU DON'T WANT TO BE SPOILERED ABOUT THE CHARACTER JUNE. **But June is a shape shifter. When she changes, she inherits every detail of the subject, their power, their personalities AND their train of thoughts. She slowly becomes them. She keeps touching Reid because she's already changed into Tyler (not because she's trying to cop a feel). She knows how he thinks and she knows of his gift. Tyler's smart enough to realize that. She works hard to keep her emotions neutral, and by touching him, she offers him some sort of relief - her neutral feelings attempt to override, or subdue the overbearing emotions of the room.

This chapter took a lot of work so PLEASE review.

--

_**No Power in the 'Verse can stop me.**_

-- River Tam

White hot fire. Everywhere. Burning him. Tearing quick, short gasps from his trembling lips as his back arched and writhed in a failed attempt to escape the flames lapping at him. The flames were everywhere, curling around his body, almost as if it were to embrace him. He wanted to voice his sudden concern. Verbalize his abuse. Scream profanities at the top of his lungs, but words escaped him. They refused to form in his head. The individual words refused to mean anything at all to him and slipped through his fingers like water.

Hands, painfully cold compared to the burning fire suffocating him, groped Reid but he couldn't make himself care. Words, voices, sound echoed far in the distance but he couldn't hear any of it. He couldn't focus enough to force the sounds to make any kind of sense. He couldn't hear what the demands, the pleas were asking of him. A slap hit him hard in the face but he didn't acknowledge it. He didn't feel the sting against his cheek.

And then something broke through the pain. Concern and guilt. The emotions were so strong that they overwhelmed him and left him gasping, even though he knew they didn't belong to him. He was too tired to actually be concerned - of what was happening to him, of the unraveling war between the hunters and witches, of Caleb's impending doom. He couldn't feel guilt, and he wasn't sure if he even should. "Ty? Baby boy?" Another sharp slap to his cheek, one Reid felt a great deal more than the last. "Talk to me. The fuck is happening to you? Ty --"

A tortured cry tore from his throat and left Reid's throat raw. He tore away from the entrapping hands and tried to curl in on himself. The hands wouldn't let him. But then the pain dimmed and he choked out quickly, "don't fucking touch --" But that's all the pain allowed. He didn't notice how shredded his voice sounded, raw and desperate.

Pain. Reid Garwin had always thought that he was well acquainted with pain. He had fooled himself into believing that the pain dealt by those his own age and his drunken father, perhaps even his misguided mother, had been sufficient pain. He was wrong. Within the last week of his life, Reid had experienced more pain than he could have imagined. The pain that surpassed his random broken bones. The pain that surpassed the knot he got every time he had to see sorrow cross Tyler's face. The pain that surpassed what Danny had done to him…how he had touched him…rough yet painfully intimate acts he'd tried to avoid. That pain had left him raw and forever dirty. Tainted.

Pain that surpassed the fatal act of watching your friends, your brothers break apart because their fathers were too weak, too tired to fight for their own lives and families. He used to think that there wasn't anything worst than the feeling he got when he saw a friend, Tyler or Caleb, lose themselves so far as tears and knowing he couldn't do anything to fix it. He was wrong.

The pain was unbearable, almost as if bits and pieces of him were being torn away and then shoved into a grinder…somehow retaining nerve endings, until he was nothing more than a big puddle of melted flesh and boiled blood. He hurt, in short. All over. But even Reid knew what this meant. Not only was he alive, but he was conscious. Straining his muscles, his hands acted on their own as they hurried to comfort his throbbing, imploding head. He curled in one himself and tried not to writhe in pure agony. "Fuck." It was just a gasp but it pulled at his throat and strained his vocal cords.

"Tyler." The word came out as a soft hiss, but the sound faded before reaching his ears. He eased his eyes open but the figure hovering over him was too blurred for him to recognize. The tears stung his face, cold against the heated flesh. "Hey, man, what the fuck?"

Reid shook his head and blinked several times but the image didn't clear up so he stopped trying. In doing so, the pain seemed to amplify, like it was all he could concentrate on, and all his previous ability to ignore the pain simply vanished. He grimaced and tried to recoil but the figure hovering over him held him in place. "Tyler, Jesus, Tyler. What the hell were you doing? Provoking Trixie like that. Hey, are you --"

Reid recoiled sharply at the voice. It sounded foreign, unfamiliar. Distinctly female, and annoyingly concerned. Fear was rolling across him in fresh waves, seizing him in a vice like grip and leaving him gasping. "Chill the fuck out," he wheezed in between heaving gasps.

He could feel the fear melt into confusion and he groaned loudly, trying to move away and curl into a ball. The pain was too fucking internal and he couldn't deal with it at all. There was no cut to apply pressure to, just intense throbbing in his head. "What happened? June?" Pogue hurried to June's side, to Reid's side. "I've never felt Tyler Use that much. Ever." He hadn't ever felt Tyler Use period… His fingers, rougher than June's had been, scoured Reid's body, trying to figure out exactly what was wrong, why this boy was writhing in pain and trembling violently. Tyler had withdrawn from the Covenant and wandered off into Pouge's bedroom, a room that was oddly as familiar to their own covenant as Caleb's house as. This was where they congregated to socialize. Caleb's house was where they went on Covenant business. June wasn't supposed to have followed him. She wasn't supposed to watch him or learn to read his nonexistent facial expressions.

"I don't know," June answered. She sounded calmer and her fear and confusion was easing rapidly until it disappeared altogether. "He was contacting Reid Garwin."

"What?" Pogue demanded, his gaze darting from June to Reid's trembling form. "That's impossible. Telepathy's too powerful. You can't control it before ascension. Tyler can't --"

"Tyler's mind is a great deal more powerful than the average witch," June interrupted. "He was making a sketch. He said it was a traitor that helped capture Garwin and Danvers. Jacob identified the witch as Cotton Warren. A member of the covenant of Justice, Pogue. The last surviving member. Jacob had told Tyler that he'd been there when Warren turned. When he conned his way out of death. I think something happened, Pogue. I think warren caught on. How Jacob talked about him, he didn't sound exactly dumb. I think he did something to him. To Tyler, or Garwin. I-I…I don't really know. He was arguing with Garwin and then…" she gestured helplessly down toward Tyler's curled form. "He passed the fuck out."

Reid groaned loudly, recalling attention back to himself. "What the fuck, Tyler?" Pogue asked him, his voice sterner than it had been toward June. What exactly had changed between Pogue and the youngest son? He hadn't ever spoken a harsh word to him before. What could three days have really done to their relationship? "Using like that. This room stinks of your Power and…and you're still fucking Using. Jesus Christ, Tyler."

Reid blinked. The anger was mounting and he swallowed hard. There was a hand on his arm, softer, warmer. "What happened?" The female voice asked in a soft, melodious tone, perching forward on her heels. Her hand shifted, her hand shifted, her fingers stroking his arm slightly as she asked, "what hurts?"

She wasn't hostile. She radiated concern, but she kept it in check well. Almost too well because all he could feel now was hostility and his own pain. "Everything," he managed to gasp.

The girl was quiet as Pogue said something that he couldn't quite make out. But something did manage to break through the fog. Pogue had called him Tyler. Pogue was here. They were here, hovering over him with blurred looks of concern across their faces. He couldn't notice the difference -- the different feel on the ground beneath his crumbled form, or the different smell that hung limply in the air above them. He didn't notice the drastic change in temperature and he couldn't feel the clothes that clung to his body, plastered against him with sweat. "But what happened?" The girl pressed. It'd been days since he last saw a female, and the difference in her gentle tone spoke volumes. She wasn't rough or demanding or overbearing. Just concerned. And the concern was beginning to give him a headache.

"I don't…" The words were a sharp gasp, interrupted by a cry of pain torn from his lips that left his throat throbbing. Breathing and swallowing felt like he was dying, over and over again. And he was still hot. So fucking hot. It was suffocating.

"Tyler," Pogue demanded, his voice turning tight with laced concern. His hands were gripping Reid's shoulders painfully hard, jerking the younger boy while pulling him closer. "Baby boy."

"It's my…" he broke off again, gasping loudly, heavy hands sluggishly lurching for his head in an ill attempt at comfort. "God." It was almost a whimper. He curled away from the two witches hovering over him. He furled tighter in on himself, both hands clenching his throbbing head, knuckles white, eyes squeezed shut and face screwed up in pain. A second head appeared beside the girl's, but he didn't see the new addition.

"You don't think…the hunters -- you don't think they've discovered a way to like…invade our minds, right?"

"That's stupid, Jacob," June scolded him quietly. She glanced over at Pogue with genuine concern that sent another ripple of pain across Reid's mind. "That's impossible, right?"

Pogue shook his head. He should have wanted to smile at the two youngest witches, but his chest was tight with unresolved tension and it hurt. "I…don't know," he told them quietly.

"What if the hunters found out what he was trying?" Jacob pressed, leaning forward on his knees. Tyler and Jacob had actually formed some kind of relationship. It was Tyler who took the time to calmly answer his questions, but it was also Tyler who didn't offer him false hope. He didn't tell the boy everything would resolve itself and nobody else would get hurt. Instead he offered to occupy the boy's mind. When he pestered them about being bored with waiting around all day, it was Tyler who separated from the group and took him to the arcade in the basement of the Parry manor. He schooled Jacob in games he always had lost to Reid at. But it was more than that. He offered advice about everything - the Power, video games, life in general. He seemed to have aged years in the past three days. Jacob had grown to like him.

"Quit being so negative, Jacob," June told him quietly. June, who had generally tagged along with Jacob, had also taken a liking toward the youngest son. She'd hate to see him die too. "They're just humans," she assured him, but she didn't sound very convinced. "They don't have that kind of power."

"How do you know?" Jacob challenged, his voice a hushed whisper, as he stared down at Reid, perplexed. "Look at what they've managed….I'd say humans have done pretty well for themselves without magic. I doubt underestimating them is in our best interest right now."

"He's right," Pogue agreed quietly. The boy lying at his feet had grown quiet, but he was still shaking, still drawn in on himself. His breathing was loud, sharp, short pants that shook his entire body and sounded like broken sobs. But Tyler didn't cry. Right? He was almost as hard as Reid. "Ty?" Pogue prodded uncertainly.

The boy jerked before he forced himself to relax. The voice above him muttered something and someone somewhere shifted and scuttled out of the room. "Tyler?" Pogue's hand was shifting on him, wrapping around his body to press against his face and turn him around. Reid slackened in Pogue's grip. "Look, baby boy, open your eyes and…" he broke off when the sound of the door creaking open filled the room. "Water," he offered. Something cold pressed against Reid's lips as hands groped him and ushered him into a half hearted sitting position. But the movement hurt and Reid cried out without attempting to contain the anguish. A pair of hands were grasping him tightly, supporting the majority of his body weight, but he couldn't find the voice to tell whoever it was to back the fuck off. Instead he jerked violently, and latched out at whoever was approaching him. A hand closed tightly around the outstretched wrist, another closed around a bicep not far from that wrist, a loud gasp echoed across the room, as the body offering the water and pulled roughly closer.

Opening his eyes, Reid realized that it was a boy, a boy he didn't recognize. The boy's face was twisted in surprise, but even Reid could identify the grimace. Hair, long, thick, fell into his face and clothes hung on his thin frame. The boy still grasped a glass of water tightly in his hand. Reid's eyes were wide, black, feral, and he tugged the boy closer. Looking into the boy's eyes, he noticed that the eyes appeared almost yellow. "Tyler?" June whispered uncertainly.

Reid's hands tightened with each new tick of pain until the kid's mouth fell open in a silent yelp. They both knew Reid was leaving bruises on his arm. A hand, feeble and small, grasped Reid's shoulder and shoved against him at the same time. Reid's grasp tightened further until Jacob forced himself to stop struggling and stare into the blacken orbs inside of Tyler Simms' head. "You're not --"

"Tyler." Pogue covered Reid's hand with his own and slowly tried to pry his fingers open. Reid jumped at the voice and whipped his head around to see the boy that was currently holding him up in a sitting position.

"Jesus," he gasped loudly. Finally breathing through the dissipating fog of anguish. "Pogue," he heard himself whisper, his voice hoarse and strained. His hands fell away from Jacob's arm and the boy fell back, the glass of water falling from his hands, splattering water across the floor. "God, Pogue." And then Reid lurched forward, hissing softly at the rapidly dissipating pain and wrapped his arms tightly around Pogue's overbearing figure, pulling the boy flush against his own body. "My god, am I glad to see you." Speaking was gaining momentum and the pain was quickly becoming a faded memory.

Pogue's hand shifted awkwardly against Reid's back, twitching as the older boy contemplated rubbing Reid's back in a comforting manner, like he'd seen done in Disney movies. Reid's breath was hot against the bare skin of his neck and it made him uncomfortable but Reid didn't seem to notice. Slowly it all made sense. The last thing he'd heard from Tyler was 'I'll make you'. And then there had been an intense tearing sensation that left him reeling and writhing in agony. "We're gonna have to save Caleb," he muttered against Pogue's skin. Pogue felt Reid smile into his neck, pure irony, the younger boy thought. He nearly missed the next statement. "And then I'm gonna bury baby boy…" **In the backyard, like the dog he is.**

"What?" The word was loud but Reid didn't wince when Pogue shouted into his ear. The older boy jerked back as if he'd been burnt. He looked downright bewildered and the emotion, an emotion Reid shouldn't even feel, washed over him. He grimaced. "Are you still Using? Why are your eyes black?"

Reid almost touched his eyes to make sure Pogue was telling him the truth, but he stopped himself. Poking himself in the eye wasn't exactly the wises thing to do at the moment. Maybe later. "No," he answered promptly. His throat strained with use and he grimaced. He sounded tired, more so than he felt. "But that bastard was. I don't know how, but he did this." He gestured angrily at his body, or Tyler's body for that matter. "I know he wanted to be me, but damn does that bitch have bad timing."

Reid angrily shoved against the ground and stumbled to his feet. June followed him in one fluid movement. "What the hell are you talking about?" Pogue demanded, rising quickly to his feet. Reid recoiled at the angry confusion he felt radiating from Pogue.

He focused on the room instead and tried to ignore the occupants within the room. He didn't feel the soft hand pressing against his back. The room he was in was Pogue's bedroom. It hadn't changed in all the years he had known the kid. Jacob, who had grown quiet over the past five minutes, quietly nursing his rapidly bruising arm, cocked his head to the side, shaggy brown hair moving on his head, as if he were listening to a sound only he could hear. His clothes looked just as worn, dirty and torn as June's did. His face was smooth, bronze; the smile that naturally curved his lips had disappeared briefly into a thin line of concentration. His golden eyes sparkled uncertainly as they darted toward the suddenly icy blue eyes that didn't belong in Tyler's face. But his expression was different. It didn't look concerned or confused or bewildered. It looked intelligent, like he knew something else. "Tyler didn't just perform telepathy. He switched bodies."

"What?" Pogue demanded. But the kid standing beside him, the kid known only as Tyler Simms didn't look appalled or confused. Pogue glared over at Jacob. "What?" He repeated.

"Yeah," Reid croaked. "That fucker did something to me because…" he gestured once more toward this foreign body that he had grown up beside. He was already beginning to feel the difference. Tyler's hearing wasn't as acute, but he felt everything. The dull throbbing in his head seemed to become a part of his body, always there and never leaving. His movement, albeit pained, was oddly graceful and quick. The thoughts in his head were different though. By looking at each occupant in the room, he knew immediately who they were. He knew immediately what Pogue had been doing since the witch hunters appeared. He knew the significance of Jacob and June and how Tyler, he, felt toward them. He lifted a hand and massaged his temple.

He saw June's eyes narrow and Pogue's face twist into a surprised suspicion out of the corner of his eye. "That's impossible," Pogue swore, shaking his head indignantly. Only Jacob saw the offended look that crossed Tyler Simms' face. "And Tyler wouldn't ever do something as stupid as this. Switching bodies? What was he thinking? I know he was desperate but --"

Reid recoiled sharply, his fingers curling possessively around his head. "It was an accident," he mumbled. That was the Tyler Simms Pogue had grown up with. But Reid knew it was an accident. He knew exactly what had happened.

"How'd you know?" June asked, her eyes locked onto Jacob's. Her voice was quiet, even and completely neutral but Jacob heard her underlying emotions. He shrugged in response.

"Don't you feel that?" He asked. His voice sounded different and June frowned. There was something within his gaze that made June uneasy. Something she hadn't ever seen before. "It's changed. His Power." Jacob shrugged. "I noticed it when he touched me. Besides, he looks different too. Like that picture we saw of Garwin." Reid lifted an eyebrow, a smirk twisting Tyler's lips. "Like that," the younger boy offered.

"Wow, Jacob," June crooned. "How observant of you."

"Fuck you," Jacob said, but his voice had returned to the tone she knew and loved.

June turned away from Jacob. She was standing just behind Reid, her hand flat against his back. He didn't attempt to shrug off the hand, it was easier to ignore it. "That'd be some mighty power," she murmured, staring up at Reid. He did look different, now that Jacob had planted the thought in her head. It was like looking at a completely different person. He stared at her differently too. "To **accidentally **switch bodies," she added.

Jacob and Reid shrugged in unison but Pogue nodded contemplatively. "Didn't you feel the power radiating off of him?" Jacob asked, shoving his fists into the pockets of his jeans.

Reid smirked, his eyebrow disappearing beneath unruly brown hair. "Tyler radiates power?" He repeated slowly, trying to grasp the concept.

June shrugged. "I didn't feel anything," she mumbled, rocking back on her heels.

Jacob smiled at her. It was the sort of smile that made her frown because it was so blatantly condescending. "You don't ever feel anything, Junebug. It was enough Power to give you a headache."

Pogue studied Jacob for a full minute before opening his mouth. "I didn't feel anything either."

"Maybe it's because his Power was so familiar to you," June offered. "The book says that all Power is individual, unique, unlike any other. It is you who molds it into what you want. Maybe his Power had changed, but nobody noticed it because you guys had always been together. But his Power was supposed to be foreign to us except -"

"You'd already felt it," Jacob concluded. "The first time the Peace contacted the Silence. That's why it was familiar this time and you didn't notice how it's evolved." _That's why covenants try to instinctively keep their distance from eachother. Because they want to know the Power -- they want to be able to gage a stranger's Power. They don't want it to be tainted with knowledge of the individual._

"I don't remember you," Reid grunted, eyeing June closely. Now that he thought about it, his memories were a great deal fuzzier than he last remembered. Trying to remember was making his headache worst.

"I stayed in a hotel," June told him quietly. "I did not meet you. I met Tyler. Because he stayed in the hotel for a week. Because he'd just received his Power and there were too many strangers nearby…the hunters were your neighbors. How could you not notice?"

Jacob nodded. "They smell different," he added.

Reid's face scrunched up in annoyance. "I'd just gotten my Power, how was I supposed to care how badly my neighbors smelt?" He asked. He was supposed to be offended but the feeling never came. "And how'd you even know -- you guys were like what? Ten?"

"I wasn't there," Jacob said. "I was in California." _And eleven… _"But hunters have always smelt funny. That's how witches know when to avoid somebody, how to stay hidden. You're almost ascended, shouldn't you know all this? It's all pretty basic."

"We smell different too," June added before Reid could respond to Jacob's concealed insult. "We come from the woods, that's where our people originate. Earth based religions, those are ours. And we smell like pine trees. You don't notice the difference because you've grown up with the smell. Those around you don't notice because the smell's common in Ipswich and Salem. Hunters come from the city, they've trained themselves to notice the smell. We have begun training ourselves to pick up on their scent as well. But we're better because we're not human and that's what has kept us alive."

"The covenant of Silence was in the war," Jacob added as soon as June had fallen silence. "Why haven't you done anything? Trained yourselves, prepared yourselves for the following wars? Your parents must have known they didn't kill the hunters - the hunters that knew exactly where they lived - their names, their addresses, their heirs. How could you not prepare yourselves for that?"

"We didn't know," Reid snapped. There's that annoyance he couldn't feel before. June's hand pressed harder against his back.

"They didn't tell us about a war," Pogue added. The annoyance was brighter in his voice than it had been in Reid's. "Nothing changed. Except Tyler's father disappeared and Caleb's father fell into addiction and Reid's…"

"Died," June finished when neither of the two boys continued. "We were there for that. We stayed for two weeks after his death, making sure the hunters didn't try anything. You guys weren't prepared because your fathers were dead. We shouldn't have left you…"

Pogue shrugged off the concern. "It doesn't matter. What matters now is that they've got Tyler."

"And Caleb's been tried for execution," Reid added. "And there's a witch on their side. And this guy who used to be friends with my father. He seemed awfully spiteful, Pogue. I don't know what he'll do to Tyler, especially when he realizes Tyler isn't me."

"He won't find out about that," Pogue assured Reid. "Tyler's not that stupid."

"Not on purpose," June agreed. "But what about Cotton Warren? He's got persuasion on his side. And he knows things."

"Things?" Pogue repeated.

"He knows things about us," Jacob clarified. "Our names, our Power. Our gifts. He's the last surviving member of the Justice. I'm not sure you understand exactly how close the Justice was to us, how interbred we were. How rare is it to have two covenants within the same state, within miles of each other? He knows everything there is to know about us. And even if he didn't, he could still persuade the answers out of anybody. He's the strongest member within our two covenants and they've got him." _We're fucked._


	10. Obscene

_A/N: I've never made demands for a predetermined number of reviews before, and I'm not gonna start now. I believe that to write is to write whether people are reading it or not. But I know the vast majority of you understand what kind of power reviews hold. It isn't just the compliments or insults -- it's a number that you can put on your readers. If you get one review you feel like crap, but if you get ten you feel elated. I don't care how many reviews I get -- but I'd like to get some. So please, review. I'll give you a cookie. I promise…. ^_^_

_**And you would judge me by my acts! But can you not look within? Can you not understand that evil is hateful to me? Can you not see within me the clear writing of conscience, never blurred by willful sophistry, although too often disregarded? Can you not read me for a thing that surely must be common as humanity - the unwilling sinner?**_

_**And do you, then, suppose me such a creature? Do you think I have no more generous aspirations than to sin, and sin, and sin, and, at the last, sneak into heaven? My heart rises at the thought. Is this, then, your experience of mankind? Or is it because you find me with red hands that you presume such baseness? And is this crime of murder indeed so impious as to dry up the very springs of good?**_

_the strange case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde_

_---_

_The punch was hard, sharp and Tyler's head snapped back with the sudden impact. He yelped as the movement jarred his pained body. Tyler shook his head and tried to focus on the face of his captor. Bob Ollinger. Mere feet behind Bob stood Cotton Warren. It took Tyler a minute to realize that looked different. Standing behind Bob somehow made him look submissive. Squinting Tyler saw the red cut across his eyebrow. A cut that Tyler knew he had because it mirrored the print of Bob's ring. "There's a traitor in the covenant," Bob murmured. Tyler's eyes darted back to him. "You know who it is, don't you?"_

_He quickly shook his head. What would he benefit from such a question? He was already a prisoner, what did it matter if he knew who the traitor was? Why would he ever tell?_

_Bob's gaze met Cotton's. Once more, Cotton looked a whole lot more submissive than he ever had before. __**Because the hunters are disconnecting themselves from him. Because he's one of us again**__. And Tyler knew it was his fault. Because he had lost control and forced the hunters to acknowledge just how uncontrollable these witches can be. "He's lying," Cotton murmured._

"_So make him stop," Bob demanded, but he was looking at Tyler once more._

"_There's a different aura," Cotton told him quietly, also staring at Tyler. Tyler shifted, weakly attempting to move further away from the pair, but Bob's meaty hand shoved firmly at his chest until he gave up and stopped moving. He couldn't even fight back anymore, he was just too exhausted. "What he knows isn't the same as what Garwin knew. It isn't inside of his body, his brain. I cannot touch it. I can't control him, my gift isn't that --"_

"_Strong," Bob growled, throwing a glare over his shoulder at Cotton. Cotton seemed to falter, taking a half step back like a beaten dog. "You witches disgust me." Tyler flinched when Bob advanced on him. A knee dug into his side but Bob held him in place, one hand pressed hard against his chest, the other hand seemed to almost pet him, as Bob dragged it down Tyler's grimy neck and across his dirt blackened collar bone. "Confirm your name," he ordered, but his voice was so soft, so faint that Tyler almost didn't hear the order._

_He shook his head. "No."_

_The hand left Tyler's chest, and wound around his index finger. His hands were still handcuffed together and with each movement, the metal dug further into his damaged wrists. He didn't have to look down to see the dark bruises marring his supposed to be pale skin. "Do not deny me." Tyler shook his head again and Bob twisted his finger further than it should ever go. His scream of pain silenced the loud crack of his bone breaking._

_He'd broken bones before and remained stoic regardless. He'd broken his finger before without crying. Why was this different? Because Reid wasn't kneeling beside him, his face screwed up into that rare, yet not really all that rare, look of concern. His body was already damaged, already tired and fed up. The pain was overloading his brain and he couldn't see anything else. Just the pain and it was beginning to drive him insane. Bob's hand didn't release his finger, and the pressure created pain of its own. "Name," he repeated when Tyler's screamed turned into a strangled choke of frustration. "Answer me!"_

"_Fine!" Tyler tried to shout back, when Bob's grip on his finger tightened. The shout sounded more like a strangled gasp. "Fine," he repeated, his voice quieter, trembling. He could hear the tears building up beneath his voice. "Tyler Simms."_

_Cotton's eyes narrowed and he walked forward. Tyler violently flinched away when he reached forward and Cotton smiled at him. But the smile was different. It looked sad instead of malicious. Bob's hand was still wound tightly around his finger, consciously applying more pressure every few seconds. He couldn't do much more than cradle Bob's fat fist with his other bound hand. Cotton pressed his own hand against Tyler's forehand, surprisingly soft. "Answer the questions and I will feed you."_

_He could feel the hunger dully gnawing at him, but it'd been so long since Reid had last eaten that his stomach had shrunk considerably and the hunger wasn't as painful as it could have been. Something deep inside of Tyler knew that he was probably going to die, and a part of him was okay with that. He refused to give them more than they already had, he refused to be that weak link in the Covenant's chain. "Fuck you."_

_Cotton's sad smile twisted yet it failed to look malicious. His fingers curled around Tyler's head, pressed firmly against the curve of his scalp. At first he didn't feel Bob tightening the grip on his broken digit, because a foreign probing stabbed gently inside of his head, hesitant but firm. Sloppy. It was painfully obvious that Cotton hadn't ever done this before, but Tyler instinctively shielded his mind. He and Reid had taught themselves to do that because they heard that the Elders punished people based on the evidence they found in their heads. Reid had declared that the mind was some sort of sacred place that even the Elders had no right to touch. He had said it was theirs and theirs alone._

_The probing quickly became more insistent, rougher, relentless. Tyler squirmed, his eyes screwed shut, his mouth pressed into a flat tense line. And then, the pressure suddenly disappeared and the pain of Bob's grip shoved itself to the forefront of his mind. He cried out loudly, his eyes popping open. Cotton was frowning at him and the pressure eased ever so slightly. "Your mind is amazingly strong. I'm sure Reid's is too. But that's your gift, isn't it? It's all mental." His hand pressed harder against Tyler's head. "Empathy. Is that correct?"_

_Tyler ignored him, but Cotton didn't need confirmation. It was true, and he could feel it. He whistled and it took Tyler a moment to realize that the fellow witch was actually impressed. "If harnessed correctly, it can be a great gift," he assured the younger boy quietly. "Only the gifts of the mind are those sought after," he murmured. "My gift of persuasion. Empathy. My sister's gift for illusions. And that freak with the telepathy. They're all very desirable gifts. Very profitable."_

_Tyler licked his lips and looked away, toward Bob. "Can you please let go of my finger." The pleading edge sharpened his voice as his eyes bore into Bob's._

"_But healing," Bob cut in, ignoring the request and yet still staring at Tyler with newfound animosity. This wasn't Reid Garwin. It wasn't the witch he wanted. "Healing must be a remarkable gift too. Is this yours, now that you're in his body?"_

_Tyler slowly nodded. "The Power is in the body, the brain. Our conscience awareness doesn't affect that. Reid's power is mine and mine is his now. Let go of my finger."_

"_Reid has more Power than you," Cotton murmured, still thoroughly studying him. "He embraced his Power. But you left him with a clean slate. He left you with block upon block of baggage. His body is disintegrating. Weak, fragile. The Power singing its vile siren song. Your Power doesn't sing quite so loudly, does it? You're not strong enough to ignore it. And when you crumble…" he nodded toward the chains encaging Tyler's bruised wrists. "That's when these hunters are gonna cut lose on you." He was smiling, and Tyler felt a glare twist Reid's pale features._

_Cotton shook his head slowly, turning his smirk toward Bob. Bob's eyes were roaming Reid's body hungrily, even as he applied infinite pressure to his broken finger. "You see, Bob, when you Use this Power of ours, you get addicted easily. Hunger for more Power. Reid is already addicted. You've noticed, Tyler. You've felt his addiction. When his anger -- his want and need - tore across you, you couldn't continue argue with him, could you? You had to force yourself to focus all of your pent up energy into ignoring the desires he passed off onto you. You didn't know it, but you were lightening his load. He would've been too far gone, too lost without your gift guiding him. He's still addicted. His body is still damaged beyond repair. But that addiction is founded in his own psyche. That addiction remains in his body, the boy you now possess, but a bit of it broke off with his conscious mind. A bit of that addiction, a bit that has lightened your suddenly heavy load, is now lodged somewhere inside your own body -- with Reid. Do you trust the boy with your clean slate? You fear he'll dirty it? It's been three days, Tyler. Do you trust your best friend?"_

_The silence consumed Tyler before Cotton finished his smug speech. The Covenant of Peace thought the hunters would attempt to tear the witches down through mundane means. Through torture and humiliation. The covenant assumed the hunters hadn't changed, not since the first witch trials, and not since the last war. They assumed the hunters had remained static in their ways. But they were wrong, and Tyler didn't know why. Why had the hunters changed so drastically within the last four years? How did they improve so rapidly? If the first war had been a semi success - with the death of an entire covenant and the destruction of another - why had they even felt the need to change? Could it really be because of these newfound gifts? And what was the deal with these gifts anyway? Why now, why so suddenly? Was it all really just another step in evolution? Did witches need more than just their inborn power…did they need gifts separate from their power - gifts that they could use regardless of their mental and physical state? He feared for the world that would consecutively need and receive such gifts. The gifts knew no bounds…they were relentless and unstoppable. They were supposed to be their secret weapon. Cotton was attempting something else. He was trying to tear the covenant apart single handedly, but he was also trying to break Tyler apart individually. _

_Did Tyler trust his best friend? It was such a vague, yet obnoxiously personal question. If he had asked Reid that same question, Reid wouldn't have had a problem with it. Because Reid's best friend was very conscientious. Reid's best friend thought of everyone. Reid's best friend exuded trust. But what about Tyler? Did he…could he trust Reid with his body - with his entire existence? Was that even possible? Reid Garwin was messy. He was problematic and sloppy and careless. That was the perfect word for Reid - careless. Impulsive. Irresponsible._

"_I trust him," Tyler heard himself utter. The sentence was quiet, soft, barely there. But it was audible. And it was the truth. Tyler trusted Reid with every fiber of his being. He knew it was foolish, and he could name a hundred people who would argue against that single action. But he couldn't help it. He lived with the guy. Not just in the same room, not just side by side. But he lived __with_ him. He'd learned to notice tiny, miniscule things that Reid did. Only he knew that Reid filled his gas tank _every_ time he took his car. Only he knew how well Reid drove. How careful he was with his car. And when Reid pressured him into getting drunk, only he knew that Reid stayed with him the next day…only Tyler knew how kind and how gentle Reid could be. How much he cared. But then again…Tyler saw and felt first hand how the addiction worked for Reid. He saw what happened when Reid tried to fight the addiction.

It started out as a twisting, grueling feeling in the pit of Reid's stomach. The feeling quickly turned into a fever. A fever that Reid fought…by sleeping in bed. The fever quickly turned into chills. It was an odd image, the fearless Reid Garwin shivering and sweating at the same time, curled into a tight ball beneath a mountain of blankets. Tyler knew how long Reid could fight the addiction. Two weeks. How weak Reid got….how he looked when he was fragile. Did he trust his best friend? The same friend that always reached out to him in the throws of his fever induced nightmares, with that painfully childish pleading looking in his eyes. With his life. With his mind and yes…even with his body. He trusted Reid. More than he had ever trusted himself. Because with Tyler, Reid was careful.

Cotton shook his head in dismay. "You're a fool. Don't you know it's foolish to put that much trust into anybody?"

"Is that what you taught your covenant?" Tyler hissed. "Should I learn from your example? I trust Reid because he trusts me. I'm loyal to Reid because he's loyal to me. Maybe if your covenant had had empathy, they'd still be alive…."

**Crack**.

The sting rose quickly from his cheek. The force pulled against his finger that was still secured in Bob's hand and he cried out, his other hand curling tighter around Bob's. His sluggish mind slowly realized that Cotton had slapped him. "They were weak."

"You were weak," Tyler spat. Bob's hand disappeared from his finger, but the absence hurt just as much as the pressure had. His hand moved across Tyler's arm. It was groping him, slowly rubbing his arm in an alarming way but Tyler manage to ignore what Reid's mind could not. "Too weak to save them. Too weak to face death with them. Too weak to be what they needed you to be, you selfish piece of --"

**Crack**.

Tyler's head snapped back with the force of Cotton's punch and Bob's hand tightened on his arm, unconsciously pulling the boy closer. The punch had landed in the same spot that the slap had and the throb turned swiftly into an unbearable sting. "You don't understand," Cotton told him slowly, quietly. His voice held the emotional depth that it had previously been lacking and Tyler realized that this witch, this stranger…this man needed him to understand his own side, his own story. He needed this and a part of Tyler wanted to give him that. But the other part, the Reid part, violently reminded him that this was the man killing the witches. His witches. His people. And eventually him. His side didn't fucking matter.

Bob's hand slid up his arm and idly began fingering his shoulder blade, his collar bone. "I don't," Tyler agreed in a tight, restrained voice. "I don't understand how you could betray your family and help those that killed them continue to kill other covenants. I'd prefer death. There's no honor in a life like yours. There's no life. I can't understand it because it's unfeasible to me. It's not even a choice."

Bob's hand shifted against his collar bone and curled around the back of his neck. His thumb twitched against the hair there in a stroking manner that could have been soothing but Tyler refused to let it be. "I had to live," Cotton growled. "My family was alive. Just not my covenant."

"Your family," Tyler repeated slowly. "Your parents and --"

"In my covenant, females had the ability to inherit the power as well," Cotton explained in a soft voice that could be mistaken as kind. "But my parents were of separate covenants. It was rare but it happened. My father died before the war, before the hunters. And my mother was gone, as was my sister. But I was sent, by my father to find them right before his death. And I intended to do just that. Except…"

"Except the hunters stopped you," Tyler finished as Bob's thumb steadily stroked the skin beneath his ear. The man's fingers were surprisingly soft, gentle. "And you thought that if you conned them into letting you live, then you could slip off to find your family."

Cotton nodded eagerly. "Yes," he nearly shouted.

Bob's fingers threaded themselves hungrily through Reid's once blonde hair but Tyler didn't stop him. "That was four years ago," he murmured. "Why're you still here?"

"Because…."

"You found your family," Tyler finished in a knowing tone. "There's a traitor in the covenant of Peace. Your sister."

Cotton nodded. "Yes. I was too late. My mother had already been killed and my sister had changed drastically since the last time I saw her. I was tainted in the intentions of these hunters, and she was tainted with her own emotionless state. She was cold and twisted and….I needed my family…after I lost my covenant. I _needed_ her. I vowed to do whatever she wanted me to as long as I remained with her."

Tyler remained silent, mulling over Cotton's confession as Bob combed through his hair, gripping and twisting at random. Reid wouldn't let Bob this close, but Tyler was more somber, too engrossed in this new chapter of information that he hardly noticed the older man's preying hands on him. Bob pulled himself closer to the boy, his fists tightening and loosening at will within Tyler's dirty hair. Hair that he had wanted to touch since day once. Such beautiful, soft hair.

"Sadistic or not, why would she do this to us?" Tyler finally asked, his voice barely above a whisper. "We didn't…"

"You didn't," Cotton agreed. "But my mother was not killed by a hunter. A misguided witch. One without a covenant, lost in the throws and wills of modern society. I saw it in Bella's mind and it was an accident. I couldn't bring myself to hate him but she couldn't ever bring herself to forgive him. She wanted to get back at him and when she could…"

"She could no longer regain her sanity," Tyler mumbled. "And anger. She hated all witches and she taught them….it was her -- it was you that taught them about electricity. That's….you can't seriously kill us. We're seventeen." The last word was a gasp. "We're seventeen," he repeated in a stronger voice. "I don't want to die."

"_You_ won't," Bob murmured, his mouth suddenly close to Tyler's ear. Tyler jumped in surprise and instinctively tried to pull away, but Bob's fist in his hair held him firmly in place. "I won't let anything happen to you…to this precious, beautiful body. You're safe, my precious."

"I thought…" Tyler paused and uncomfortably cleared his throat. "Reid thought you hated him. His memories…you weren't very nice…"

Bob shook his head. "No, I wasn't," he murmured, his fist pulled on Tyler's hair and forced his head back to exposed his neck. "It's wrong. It's indecent. I shouldn't…"


	11. Gifted

A/N: Ugh. I hate this chapter. It's just a filler chapter. Just one conversation - explaining these gifts. Don't hate me, pwease. And review!

---

Reid sat across the room, as far away from the witches as he could get without leaving the room. They were talking, arguing in hushed voices, but Reid could feel it. Their anger. White hot, burning against his skin. He was hunched over in his chair, his head cradled in his hands, fingers laced tightly into his brown locks. Locks that looked even weird to him now that he didn't bother to put in the gel that Tyler always applied to his hair. The emotions of the witches were rippling over him like an ocean, threatening to submerge him deep enough to promise drowning.

"Hey." Reid jumped when a gentle hand touched his shoulder. According to Shadow, the one that didn't talk as much as the others, Tyler received his gift when he was sixteen. And Reid vaguely remembered the emotional outbursts Tyler experienced, how he looked like he was in constant pain for an entire month. After that month, he grew quiet. He'd always been withdrawn, but after his outbursts, he seemed to stop assuming. He just knew. Reid hadn't ever questioned him, he took it all in stride. But this must have been what Tyler went through. The mere fact that something this big had happened to Tyler and the boy hadn't seen fit to tell him, his best friend, actually really hurt. First his father, and now his gift. Shadow had actually told him not to feel offended, but Reid had ignored him. How could he not?

It was that girl that had introduced herself as June. She was the one that kept touching him. She had somehow managed to remain smiling, even after his outburst. He knew his face was red because it felt like it was on fire. But he could feel her, the sheer cheer within her and it was somehow calming. "Your friend never told you," she told him quietly. "That he felt people. That sucks, right?"

"Yeah," Reid croaked. His throat still hurt, from the screaming he'd done earlier upon gathering conscious awareness of his body. "Asshole," he swore, glaring down at the ground.

"I meant for your friend," June clarified quietly, sitting down in the chair across from him. "I hear you've been healing since forever. Pogue explained how it was like an adaptation of your body. You needed to heal because you were always reckless or whatever. But you own that power, it doesn't control you. You get to call upon it, and focus it, and use it. But with empathy, it's like it's using you. You can't control it, and you can't ignore it. And what everybody else is feeling, it's what you feel. _You are them_. How can you ever be yourself, who you want to be, when all these people reside within you? All those times Tyler fought beside you, how do you know it was his own anger fueling him? And not yours? How do you know Tyler at all? When all these little chips of yourself, and everybody else, has been breaking off and impending themselves in him. You're all tearing him apart and replacing him with yourself, and there isn't that much left of him. He didn't want to seem weak, or ungrateful. He wanted to embrace the power, just as his best friend had."

Reid endured June's speech in silence. She described Tyler so delicately, as if she really knew him. He could feel her passion, and he knew there was something deeper to her reason. "You have a gift, don't you?" He asked quietly. It was so much easier to be quiet, as Tyler.

June smiled brightly at him. "We all have gifts, Reid. Most of ours have shown themselves too. Except for Pogue, and Caleb. And Marshal. Odd how the leaders always learn last. They're too busy leading, to ever shut up and understand what it is they need to do."

"What is it?" Reid pressed. "Your gift. What's it got to do with empathy?"

June's smile didn't falter. "I take pieces of people and use them to my advantage," she answered him slowly. "Shape shifting. And mimicry. I can mimic anybody flawlessly. Provided I study them. I can't just know. But the longer I remain as them, the less I am myself. I start to lose myself when I don't change back. It's a double edged sword, Garwin. Just because your gift is harmless doesn't mean all of ours are."

Reid grimaced and June's face brightened up as she managed to make her negative feelings disappear. "You know Shadow? His power is telepathy. That's why he seemed to…be reading your mind. Except just as Tyler, he can't turn it off. He developed it before he received his Power. He hears everybody in the room, all the time. If you listen, you can tell that Shadow's doing all the talking." She nodded to the circle of witches, Marshal, Pogue, Beatrix and Shadow. Squinting, Reid could see that Shadow's lips were moving. "It's because he's answering their unspoken questions. Trixie hates it. The thought of somebody inside of her head. But he can't stop it. He hears their thoughts and they process into his own thoughts, sometimes clouding them, just as empathy would. When you bring other people into it, it's difficult to be yourself.

Reid sighed loudly. "Fine. You're right. Your powers suck. And mine was perfect. Perfect," he moaned.

June actually laughed. Pogue's head snapped up and he stared off in their directed before shrugging and returning to the conversation at hand. "Jacob can kind of talk to machines," she told him suddenly. "He's always been partial to cars, even before he received the power. He'd always known how to fix things. He'd always know what things were called. And then a year ago I walked in on him arguing with my computer. I thought I was losing my mind."

Reid grunted. "That's cool." At least one of them benefited from their gift… "What's that other chick do? What's wrong with her anyway? She'd kind of a…."

"Bitch?" June concluded, good naturedly.

"Yeah," Reid croaked. "And her emotions…they're like…nonexistent."

"Trixie's kind of cold," June agreed. "She hasn't always been that way. But the last time we were in Ipswich, you remember some of ours were killed. And it was her mother. And she was gone for a few months there, just lost in herself. She's cold. And emotionless. And kind of scary in the heat of battle." Reid nodded. He could just imagine. "She creates illusions. She adapted surprisingly quick to her trade though. I can't imagine the concentration it must take to mess with other peoples' minds. Because that's what illusions are, you make them believe something that isn't really happening. It's all in the mind with Shadow, and Trixie, and Tyler to an extent."

"You too though," Reid murmured. June made a face and Reid held up a hand before she could say anything. He knew what he was thinking, even if he couldn't read her mind. "I understand that you changing your image isn't mental. I'm not retarded. But you steal their thoughts and feelings too. That's not physical."

June flashed him a grin. "Tyler explained how you heal people. He said you could see the injuries, like inside of his body. Just by looking at them."

"Yeah," Reid grunted.

"It's something you're proud of," June murmured, studying Reid's face closely. Reid nodded slowly. "I think we're all proud of it. These little gifts we've managed to master. We all stress them, trying to make what's good already better. I'm trying to retain free thought when I'm…not me."

"I'm trying to heal bones faster," Reid murmured. "Heal more people quicker. Or selectively." He paused and then licked his lips. "At least I was, when I was in my own body…"

"Empathy sucks, Reid. But it'd be a whole lot worst if Tyler hadn't had such a tight handle on it," June assured him. "He was trying to selectively feel people."

Reid scoffed, and managed to look away from June. Instead he glared toward Pogue, Marshal, Shadow and Beatrix, who were still whispering furiously within their own circle. Excluded once more. "You know him better than I do."

"Only because I was him," June assured him. "Tyler didn't tell me shit, Reid. And now that you're him, I'm sure you'll learn just as much as I did. But I knew what I was looking for and you don't. I just wanted to know he was…legit. I wanted to know he was who he said he was. And I wanted to gauge his power."

"You turn into me and Caleb?" Reid asked, his eyes narrowing on June. He wasn't as angry as he thought he should be. "You know our --"

"No," June interrupted. "Stryker didn't want me to. He wanted to feel safe, but he didn't want me prying. So it was just Tyler and Pogue. But only for half an hour tops. Now that you're him, you can access his memories, his personal thoughts and feelings on things. _Only by becoming Tyler will you ever really know him."_

"You really like yourself enough that you don't ever want to be anybody else?" Reid asked. "You don't ever not wanna turn back into yourself?"

June shrugged. Nobody had ever asked her that before. People just assume you want to be yourself, they don't know how hard it is to ignore the desire to remain as this other person. They don't know how hard it is to be somebody you know is better than you are, and not stay like that. To return to flawless June is the hardest thing she'd ever done - time and time again.

"I'd like to be prettier, Garwin," she murmured coyly. "I'd like to possess more power. To be somebody. Somebody who matters. But if I were that somebody else, I wouldn't be me, and I like how I think. And talk. And act. If I'm somebody else, I can't be me. I can't retain the relationships I've already got. With Jacob, and Tyler, and Stryker. If I'm somebody else, I can't ever be myself again. And I do like myself quite a bit."


	12. Caught in an orgy of selfsacrifice

A/N: I've been neglecting the vast majority of my secondary characters. Philosophy - don't introduce them if you don't intend to use them. Excess, yet wholly unnecessary characters just clutter a story. This is what I've been neglecting - the escape. Here it is, people. The beginning of my finishing arc. And since all of my characters will be utilized - I'll make a list and define each character, so it doesn't feel like I'm just throwing random names at you. Don't care for the list - just skip it. The chapter is after the list XD

Covenant of silence:

Reid Garwin: gift of healing.

- Reid's father died in the first war.

Caleb Danvers: Can't tell you - spoilers.

- Caleb's father fell into addiction because of the first war

Pogue Parry: Can't tell you - spoilers

- Charles Parry

Tyler Simms: Empathy

- Tyler's father abandoned him after the first war.

Covenant of Justice

Cotton Warren: Gift of persuasion.

- He betrayed his covenant and they are all dead.

Covenant of Peace

Bartholomew Stryker: Protective, blunt father of June.

Maybellene Connor: Wary and strict mother of Marshal.

Shadow: The in-between of the first and second generation. He is twenty two and silence for the most part. He possesses the gift of telepathy.

Marshal Connor: Basically the leader. This is what happens when your leader doesn't know how to lead you. Can't tell you his gift yet.

Beatrix Warren: Cotton's sister. The inevitable downfall of the covenant of peace. She's the traitor. And her gift is illusions.

June Stryker: The polar opposite of her father. Her gift is glamorous and mimicry - aka shape shifting. She was extensively trained in martial arts and thievery.

Jacob Ozbourne: Youngest. His mother abandoned him and his father was killed due to the first war - ironically, it was his mother who had the power. He - himself - wasn't involved in the first war, because he didn't have his power yet. His gift is technopathy.

And read on, my little ducks.

The world is dying from an orgy of self-sacrifice.

Reid forced himself to remain still, hands fisted, arms crossed stiffly over his chest, cigarette crushed between clenched teeth. He felt tense and he hated it. It was suddenly so much easier to feel it all, inside of this body, all of these emotions twisting inside of his head, clawing and stabbing at him until he wanted to scream out in pain, or insanity, or frustration. He didn't even know. He felt so much and yet he wasn't sure what _he _felt at all.

He didn't like them. Pogue, and Tyler, seemed to have adapted to this new other Covenant annoyingly quick. Pogue obeyed orders Reid knew he'd scoffed at before. Pogue didn't obey, not for anyone that wasn't Caleb. And hearing how these people talked of Tyler annoyed Reid even more. Pogue kept saying how Tyler had really stepped up, how all these thoughts of his really helped them out. How losing Tyler is going to cost them. Who was this Tyler they kept referring to? He knew it only felt wrong because it felt different. He knew how stubborn he was - how he hated change. But shouldn't that have changed too? Did Tyler hate change just as much as him? Did Tyler hate how they talked to him too? Did he hate being in charge - a real adult for the first time in his life?

It was the captured hunters that inevitably broke down in the end. A lot of hunters were hardened, changed by what they'd done, what they'd seen. Perhaps some had always been hardened. But the two that were captured were not naturally hardened. They cried. Stryker reasoned that this was probably why they were so easily captured. They were trained well enough, they didn't crack as easily as they were supposed to. It took more than both June and Shadow's futile attempts to crack them. Shadow was telepathic, but the hunters had pointedly been thinking about something else entirely - calculus and latin of all things.

Shadow was twenty-two, and silent in ways that a young man rarely ever was. His face remained blank, even as he felt the frustration rippling through his body. Even as Reid felt it. It was Reid who expressed Shadow's frustration.

June could sometimes inherit memories when she shape shifted. But the mind had to be extremely simple if she were to adapt to it so quickly. Sometimes she preferred complex minds, because it was easier to retain a sense of herself longer. This wasn't one of those times.

Both attempts failed.

It was Stryker who succeeded. Jacob and Pogue had made bets over it. Jacob lost. Stryker didn't use his Power, and he didn't possess an ability. He was first generation. He used torture. Torture methods that would make assassins and mob bosses grimace and writhe in discontent. And he did so with the greatest of poker faces. It was a teaching opportunity, and June conducted the class in a hushed whisper, speaking to Jacob, Reid and Pogue - ignoring Reid's own discontent. His own grimaces of fear and pain. They didn't belong to him. She didn't seem put off by the blood or the tortured screams of agony either.

The real art was to assure your subject that you could do _anything _to him. That no act was too great or too violent for you. If there were no boundaries, there was all the greater reason to fear you. Because without boundaries nothing could stop you. The idea of playing Britney Spears in the background was June's idea. Dancing erotically to the music was Jacob's.

"Put your shirt back on," Stryker grunted on his way out. Never dwell too long with the subject, or they might realize just how human you are. People are fucked up - but they're still instruments waiting to be played. Something struck their cords sooner or later, and Stryker was intent on taking his cords out of the room before they could be struck. Before the bewildered, lost moans could break through his already deteriorating shield.

"You like it," Jacob crowed after him. But he put his shirt back on. The hunter, a Mr. Thomas Fowl, laid on the ground several feet from the teenagers, clutching a bloodied hand to his chest - a hand three fingers less than when they'd first began. He should've talked. Jacob approached him with a skip to his step. And Reid stared after him incredulously. How fucked up did their lives have to be - for them to take torture with such a big smile? The music, still blasting from the basement stereo, had successfully drowned out the screams of agony. "We can get down like there's no one around," Jacob sang along, dancing his way across the room. "We keep on rocking, we keep on rocking." he knelt beside Thomas and the man visibly shrank away. "We can listen to Christina Aguilera next," Jacob offered with a smile. The man recoiled, as if the boy had verbally threatened him. Shaking his head, Pogue quickly left the room. It didn't help - the music vibrated through the floors above the basement, loud as if you were still in the same room as the stereo. As he followed Stryker, he heard Marshal mutter something about Jacob and female pop stars. As if it were a regular occurrence.

They had a location. A place no one but Reid seemed to recognize. It was foggy at best, because the memory belonged to him, not Tyler. It made sense, really. The covenant of Peace were outsiders, and the club under which the hunters appeared to be located was a really shady club. A club his friends wouldn't touch - wouldn't even think of touching.

They were all going. Ambush, or so that was the idea. Risky, especially when more than half of them were teenagers. June went in as one of the captured hunters; it was the easiest, quickest way to learn the layout of the compound. The guard shifts, the prisoner holding cells. Acquired knowledge she didn't really have to acquire. But the club had a theme, a theme that visibly set Marshal, his mother, Stryker and Pogue on edge.

"It's an S&M club," Reid explained. "You can't go in there in jeans and chucks, or they'll report you."

"Report us?" June echoed. "Surely there isn't a dress code…"

"What does S&M mean?" Jacob asked. And then he verbally took back his question at Reid's mischievous smile.

"Sadism masochism," Reid answered. "I dated a chick a few years back who was into that shit. Makes you feel weird, after being taught not to hit girls, suddenly they want it. Indecisive bitches."

"Watch it," Maybellene said in the sternest voice Reid had ever heard. She opposed cussing, and that felt weird - when Stryker spoke like a lost sailor.

"I don't get it," Jacob said.

"Some people like pain," June filled in. "Some people like inflicting pain. They fit together like a custom made glove. Evidently it's a sexual movement now. Get on with it, Garwin."

Reid flashed June a smile that was too flirtatious for Stryker's liking. "If they know you're an outsider," he began again. "They won't talk to you. And what we want most right now is to fit in seamlessly. To call attention to yourself would be to tell them where you are, correct?"

Reid seemed in command, as in command as Tyler had been, anyway. Pogue could almost forget that this wasn't Tyler. That this was the screw up he grew up with. Reid Garwin. The one who half assed gym class, who wrote his own doctor's notes and could forge any teacher's handwriting but refused to do his own homework. He was stepping up.

"I don't think this will be appropriate --"

"No," Reid said, shaking his head and successfully interrupting Marshal. Marshal didn't appear to like him anymore than Caleb had. But Caleb was his brother. When Caleb hated him, the love still existed. With Marshal - he had no love for Reid, so all he could acknowledge was his own hate. It was different. And Reid could feel that animosity radiating off of Marshal. It burned, and made him want to hate Marshal back. Or beg him for acceptance. Neither of which seemed appealing to Reid.

"Fuck that. Don't think about what is appropriate for your child. There are hundreds of them." Or so he assumed… "And like ten of us." He really hadn't counted. "You can't afford to concern yourself with your children. They're big kids now - they'll take care of themselves. What you see tonight will be seared into your brains. It will change all of us. But I don't care. Because right now, they've got Tyler. And Caleb. And hundreds others that we owe our loyalty to. _Your innocence will have to die for them to live, but at the same time - you're preserving the innocence of generations, of thousands._"


End file.
